Valencia (EFE).- Internal medicine experts advocate promoting a “change in mentality” that promotes a new health care model where, in view of the increase in longevity and an increasingly aging population, the hospital replaces the home. Measures such as admission, telecare or telemedicine for the patient are prevalent.
“For patients, the farther they live from the hospital, the better,” Dr. Juana Carretero, president of the Spanish Society of Internal Medicine (SEMI), assures EFE. Valencia from 15 to 17 November, where they will update the different pathologies that these specialists treat and address aspects such as new technologies and artificial intelligence.
fragmentation of the health system
“The challenge of internal medicine is to maintain our essence as general practitioners, as we take a comprehensive approach to the sick person,” says Carretero, who warns that they may lead to “fragmentation of the health system in patient care.” Have to face. The trainee’s goal is to “maintain harmony”.
Currently, he explains, the health system is very focused on acute illness, on taking care of a specific type of illness that affects the patient at that moment and which “primarily takes him to the hospital,” but “it “It forgets a little about the rest” – those conditions of the patient that affect the presence of that disease.
In his opinion, a person affected by multiple chronic diseases cannot juggle through five or six different consultations, but rather “should try to be seen by the same doctor as best possible and avoid fragmentation in that care.”
That’s why he believes the health system’s “biggest challenge” is “not being able to cope with this avalanche of chronic diseases and ageing.”
He believes that we can no longer think about a health system focused on patients with serious illnesses and going to hospital, but rather on supporting them at home on an outpatient basis, and a new care model. Advocates for care that promote hospitalization, telecare or home care. Telemedicine.
mindset change
“I think the further away the patient is from the hospital, the better,” says the expert, who admits it will mean “a change in mindset for both professionals and managers, because it will require reallocation of resources,” but This would result in “better health” for people, as emergency room visits and hospital readmissions would be reduced.
In his opinion, the current public health system is not prepared for this paradigm shift in patient care, and he assures that there is a “great disparity” in the distribution of domestic hospitalization units.
Thus, while Catalonia has 26 or Navarra has more domestic hospitalization beds than a conventional hospital, autonomies such as Extremadura have none “despite the existing health spillover”, and Castilla León has only one.
The president of SEMI points out that there is a “shortage” of internists and that more specialists will be needed, because he is a doctor who works in different places (hospitalization wards, home hospitalization, palliative care, monographic consultation…) And also in shared assistance with other specialties.
Climate change and artificial intelligence
With regard to climate change, it highlights the need to take it into account, as mortality increases for every one and a half degree increase in the planet’s temperature, and it also refers to the advantages and risks of the application of artificial intelligence (AI) Is. This feature.
Thus, he highlights advantages such as telemedicine or telemonitoring, which allow patients to receive care in their homes, share medical histories or be able to predict the presence of certain diseases, but he clarifies: Internists “are humanists, we like to see and touch the patient and those systems take you away from them a little bit.”
He also points out that although AI is developing very rapidly, legislation in this regard is “moving at a slow pace.”
During the meeting, which will be held at the Valencia Conference Centre, there will be more than 125 scientific activities and a book on comorbidities in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) will be presented, as well as a comprehensive management protocol for insufficiency Will be done. Heart with preserved ejection fraction, a condition in the management of which trainees are the “reference”.
They will also present a multidisciplinary management protocol for systemic vasculitis and talk about the person who lives with obesity and how it is expressed in internal medicine patients, creating a decalogue of concomitant diseases in internal medicine. efe