Clinical collaboration network between primary and specialized health care professionals reduces the number of derivations.
-This is the working hypothesis of a research project of the Instituto Universitario de Investigación en Atención Primaria (IDIAP Jordi Gol)
Spain, February 2012.- it is see if an Online communication tool between primary and Hospital (ECOPIH) a reduction of the number of referrals. The aim is that primary care professionals can consult doubts specialists immediately, and with a response that should not exceed 48 hours.
ECOPIH consists in designing and implementing a virtual platform with web 2.0 technology that allows the interaction and communication between primary care and specialized care health professionals online. The project involves professionals from medicine, nursing, social work, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, Podiatry and dentistry, and it has been developed by David Lacasta, family physician, and Souhel Flayeh, primary care nurse.
The study is being done on three specialties: cardiology, Endocrinology and Pneumology. includes 131 medical primary health care working in 9 health centres in Catalonia that serve a population of reference of 227.151 inhabitants.
Objective
Study the total reduction in referrals for each specialty, check if those professionals who use the ECOPIH reduced more referrals than those that do not use.
The reason for the project
Primary care medical consultations are characterized by serving a large number of patients with various health problems, which can generate some doubts in clinical practice. As points out Dr. David Lacasta, researcher main project “practitioners must seek sources that allow them to resolve these issues, and sometimes a referral to the second level of care (specialist) is generated by the difficulty of finding easily a response”.
Dr. Lacasta concludes “we believe necessary to demonstrate the usefulness of the tool as a means to optimize the use of health resources, facilitating the accessibility between levels of care, avoiding duplication and reducing costs in the process”.
what is the IDIAP?
The Foundation Jordi Gol i Gurina was created in 1996 by the Catalan Health Institute, with the aim of promoting and managing innovation, training, teaching and research clinical, epidemiological and health services in the field of primary health care.
2006, Became the Institute for research in primary care Jordi Gol (IDIAP Jordi Gol), and the 2010 admits to the UAB as Instituto Universitario de Investigación en Atención Primaria.
From August 2011 has the quality certification ISO 9001: 2008 for its activities of support and advice to project research.
