key: cord-0896374-xrkg230z
authors: Ares Castro-Conde, B; López Mouriño, VM; Sanz Falque, I; López Castro, J
title: COVID 19 and the new challenges in health management: the pilot experience of the Internal Medicine Department of a Regional hospital
date: 2020-11-28
journal: J Healthc Qual Res
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhqr.2020.11.001
sha: 6e75d3036f6af81a43a5820984268a294cd91939
doc_id: 896374
cord_uid: xrkg230z

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J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f COVID 19 and the new challenges in health management: the pilot experience of the Internal Medicine Department of a Regional hospital.

Ares Castro-Conde B 1 

A pandemic, any pandemic, always surpasses a healthcare system, any healthcare system.

And ours was no exception. Following the well-known culture of safety 1 it is up to the wave crest to make a detailed analysis of the weaknesses and strengths that have been revealed during these arduous previous months and that have led to a paradigm shift in the way of understanding healthcare on a global level and particularly in our country. To do this, we would like to show the experience of a 141-bed regional hospital, located in an area with a low to the multidisciplinary care provided (in homes, social health centres and hospital) which will have to be evaluated in future studies. Due to the average age of our population (more than 30% older than 65 years) and the high number of Social Health Centers in our small area (11), the Hospital Management together with our geriatrician, attached to the Internal Medicine Department, performed a work plan that consisted of close monitoring of the same through a daily telephone interview with the medical and nursing staff of said centers and scheduled and on-demand visits through the Home Hospitalization Unitt. In addition, the social health centers were reinforced with nursing personnel and one of them also with medical personnel, with the intention of handling all positive COVID-19 cases without having to move them whenever their clinical situation allowed it. In mid-March, the first COVID-19 positive patient was admitted to our hospital and since April 15 we have not had positive cases that required admission, which has a much lower impact than in other Regional hospitals in our environment (being the entire Galician Community area of low incidence of the disease). This model of crisis management during the pandemic highlights the great importance of "anticipating events", working "in a network" between primary and hospital health care and the value of well-used telemedicine that allowed avoiding multiple hospital admissions from the centers social and healthcare, in addition to, through the TELEA monitoring program (Home Assistance Platform), carry out daily follow-up of patients from their homes, which is why we want to communicate this through this letter since we are convinced that teamwork and power anticipate the arrival of the virus, they have been very important to be one of the healthiest areas with the lowest lethality in Spain.

4 , perhaps in 5 or 6 months we will suffer another new outbreak of the disease, for

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