The significant number of patients infected with covid and health workers on sick leave due to being positive in covid or waiting to confirm or rule out the epidemic has strained Pitiusas health centers. For weeks, users have complained that they must wait 10-12 days for an appointment with their family doctor or nurse, and many of those who have been isolated by contagion claim they feel helpless and anxious because no health care provider has contacted to ensure that their condition is mild.
The management of the Health Area of Ibiza and Formentera admitted Tuesday that the situation in Primary Care is now so convoluted, and that the average wait time for a consultation in outpatient clinics is “more or less,” as reported by users. “This issue has occurred just as professionals were recovering from the consequences of the last wave,” said management, who added that it is currently seeking to acquire more doctors. “But,” he complains, “there aren’t any.”
As a result, at this time, the only alternative for reducing patient wait times for Primary Care consultations is to have special days, also known as peonadas. This occurs, for example, when a professional who works in the morning on some days also works in the afternoon on a volunteer basis. At the moment, each physician in the Pitiusas Islands’ basic health centers and units attends an average of 50 visits each day, both face-to-face and by phone, a figure well exceeding the 30 to 35 they were seeing prior to the surge in cases of this wave.
This increase in the number of consultations to be handled by each doctor in a single day is attributable, first and foremost, to an increase in population demand for care, spurred by an increase in covid infections. More than 5,000 people have been infected, a condition that has never happened before, and practically all of them (more than 99%) are mild or asymptomatic, so if they are ill, they go to their health center rather than the hospital. In other words, the hospital strain that existed during the lethal third wave a year ago has been transferred to primary care.
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