Health creates family management units to streamline health centers in the Canary Islands

The Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands has set up family management units in primary care to further improve and simplify health care for the population receiving care in health centres.

This pilot project, which is initially being developed in primary care departments in Tenerife and Gran Canaria, is one of the measures included in the comprehensive strategy for primary and community care, + AP, the Ministry of Health reported in a statement.

These family management units, consisting of a doctor, a nurse and an administrator, aim to optimize resources and make medical consultations in primary care more flexible, in addition to free health professionals from carrying out the administrative procedures they have been assigned to date, so that this value is given to the functions of each professional.

The new management model for primary care in the Canary Islands, which was launched last March, contains specific protocols and procedures aimed at responding to delays caused by an overload of care.

Thus, the new models for regular schedules for 2023 set a maximum of 34 daily appointments for family medicine specialists and 28 appointments for pediatric consultations.

This new system responds to manage excess demand on the schedule of professionals, as well as by being replaced by another specialist in case of accidental absences, or creating sets of reinforcement incidents that prevent further delays in patient care.

According to the data collected during the month of June, the average wait for the entire autonomous community was 4.7 days, which indicates that the measures adopted have successfully prevented the schedule limit from increasing the delay as a whole.

Currently, the average delay in 15 percent of inquiries is less than two days, compared to 7.6 percent recorded in June 2022, which is an indicator that shows the positive development of the model.

Compared to June last year, the data for the same month this year improved, especially in Gran Canaria, where the average waiting day moved from 5.5 to 4.3 days, and in Tenerife, where it decreased from 6.6 to 5.4 days.