This year it is planned that the Ministry of Health will carry out important modifications in the Service Portfolio, involving all the autonomous communities and altering the diagnostic procedures carried out by doctors from health centers and requests for hospital care. This will cause various challenges, such as harmonize the services and diagnostic tests provided in Primary Care of the autonomous communities, according to various family doctors in the 30th National Congress of General and Family Medicine.
This was determined by four specialists at the debate table ‘Diagnosis of the future: debating the introduction of new diagnostic tests in Primary Care’, which was held this Saturday, as part of the 30th Congress that is being held in A Coruña. “It is the largest modification of the Service Portfolio”has stated Fatima Santolayaof the Clinical Genetics and Rare Diseases Working Group of the Spanish Society of General and Family Physicians (SEMG).
=”600″ height=”240″ layout=”responsive” alt=”AMP”> Fátima Santolaya, from the Clinical Genetics and Rare Diseases Working Group of the Spanish Society of General and Family Physicians (SEMG). |
“When you see it, you think we’ve been doing it for a long time, but it’s endorsed”, added the family doctor. Thus, one of the objectives of this initiative and the challenge it poses is “consolidate equal access from all parts of Spain”. The modification “obliges the autonomous communities to provide us and give us equipment to be able to do the corresponding tests,” he highlighted.
Process for modifying the Service Portfolio
In 2022, a working group was created in the Ministry of Health in which an update of different procedures of the Primary Care Services Portfolio was approved, with the approval of the autonomous communities in 2023he recalled Francisco José Sáezhead of the SEMG Clinical Management Group.
=”600″ height=”240″ layout=”responsive” alt=”AMP”> Francisco José Sáez, head of the SEMG Clinical Management Group. |
Among other benefits, this initiative will allow “provide better care to patientschanging the way of monitoring them, improving the use of different forms of diagnosis and promoting Primary use of a large part of the diagnostic procedures that exist in hospitals and that Unfortunately they cannot be used in Primary, which causes delay“.
Like her partner, Sáez has agreed that the modification “makes it mandatory in all autonomous communities to carry out certain tests” because until now “there are differences and there are diagnostic tests that are allowed in some and prohibited in others and COPD or asthma cannot be diagnosed.” Therefore, discussion tables like this serve to “disseminate it to family doctors throughout Spain and that they know that it is something that their regions must assume.” Manuel Mozota Núñezfamily doctor and member of the SEMG Clinical Management Group, who has expressed his doubts about the implementation of the new Portfolio of Services and the pace at which it is carried out.
=”600″ height=”240″ layout=”responsive” alt=”AMP”> Manuel Mozota, family doctor and member of the SEMG Clinical Management Group. |
Possible solution to reluctance
For his part, the head of the SEMG Clinical Management Group also emphasizes that with this change situations such as “hospitals with a partial vision against Primary Care that decide not to make it easier for family doctors to make certain diagnoses“Added to this are the “reluctance in some hospitals to request Primary tests,” he detailed. Jesus Alonsofrom the SEMG Ultrasound Group.
“Not all autonomous communities are at the same level, for example, in clinical ultrasound”. For this reason, the update of the Services Portfolio that the Ministry has planned for this year will make “Increase the resolution capacity of the Family doctorimprove the care of your patients and will indirectly favor the reduction of waiting lists,” he highlighted. In turn, “the professional satisfaction of the Family doctor by being able to perform tests that he previously did not know how to do and is now fully trained will increase, as well like that of his patients to see that his doctor is capable of do more things than you thought you could do or had done up to that point“, concludes Alonso.
=”600″ height=”240″ layout=”responsive” alt=”AMP”> Discussion table on the introduction of new diagnostic tests in Primary Care. |
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