Redaccion
The Vice Minister of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands and director of the Canarian Health Service (SCS), Carlos Díaz, addressed on Friday in a meeting with the managing director of the Insular-Materno Infantil University Hospital Complex, José Blanco, as well as with other hospital executives, the implementation of the project through which the Hospital Complex will communicate interactively with its patients via SMS to manage their appointments with the specialist doctor.
This reminder management system is an interactive communication project via SMS that redirects the user to a «simple application» that offers the patient the option to confirm, cancel, or request a change of appointment date in case they cannot attend, as reported by the hospital complex in a press release.
The patient will receive the SMS 10 days before the appointment and will have the possibility to confirm their attendance or not, as well as the need to reschedule the appointment if they cannot attend.
In this way, patients will receive a text message with a personalized link, allowing them to access the specific details of their appointment, including location, service, and time, as well as the options for confirmation, cancellation, or change.
The implementation of this system at the Hospital Complex has allowed for 3,600 appointment confirmations for consultations.
POSSIBILITY TO INTERACT
The application has been created by the SCS in collaboration with the Information and Telephone Assistance Service 012, offering for the first time to the patient the possibility to interact with the system regarding hospital consultations, an «non-existent option» until now.
In this sense, the director of the SCS, Carlos Díaz, pointed out that with this new provision, it «contributes to improving» the communication of the Hospital Complex with its users, being able to «optimize» the activity in consultations, as canceled appointments can be rescheduled and avoid empty slots in the agendas due to absences.
The pilot of this system began in May at the Nuestra Señora de Candelaria University Hospital in Tenerife, and at the La Palma University Hospital, in addition, it has also been implemented in the Health Services of the La Gomera Health Area, and will gradually be extended to the rest of the hospital centers in the Canary Islands in order to continue improving the appointment management processes with specialist doctors and improving patient accessibility to the scheduled medical evaluation.
Díaz explained that this application allows to «respond to the need» to attend to the patient with the least possible delay and «improve» the management of consultations and reduce waiting lists in this area.
Additionally, the application replaces any active solution previously developed by some centers that had started to create similar systems. In this way, the SCS offers an equal tool for all centers and gives the same opportunity to patients regardless of the reference hospital they attend according to their health card.
Finally, it was noted that in case of not receiving a response to the message, the appointment reminder manager will activate a telephone call protocol, so that an operator will try to contact the patient by phone call to maximize the chances of locating and recording the confirmation, cancellation, or request for a change of appointment by the patient.
Likewise, if the patient does not use a mobile phone, they will receive a call to their landline phone for the same purpose. However, users are reminded that to access this SMS system, they must have their health card information up to date.
