Better care outside working hours: Domus Medica and guard centers launch twenty proposals | local

Anyone who becomes ill over the weekend or at night can go to the GP on call. However, they have to handle more and more calls, which has increased pressure on unplanned care. This is also noticeable in emergency services, which are receiving more and more patients.

Therefore, Domus Medica and Wachtposten Vlaanderen believe that an unambiguous approach in primary and secondary care is urgently needed. With twenty proposals, they are already taking the first step toward a better health care system.

One of their main points is to develop a more consistent triage system across emergency services and guard stations. There seem to be different systems in use today and they need to be more coordinated.

The organizations believe that the personalized level of care should also be “binding to the patient, so that the right care can be provided in the right place at the right time.” “Patients who receive ‘urgently in need of care from a GP’ as a triage result automatically receive a digital triage code with which they can make an appointment at the waiting centre,” this logic says.

Furthermore, Domus Medica and Wachtposten Vlaanderen call, among others, for every triage to be recorded and made available to healthcare providers and patients, and additional means of transportation for unplanned care should be developed. Finally, they want out-of-hours home visits not to be arranged by an individual out-of-hours GP but by central management.

Domus Medica and Wachtposten Vlaanderen developed their vision for the future together with a group of experts, consisting of representatives of general practitioners, pharmacists, emergency services, academics and other partners. They also presented the text to the guard station councils, employees and representatives of the three doctors' unions, among others.

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