Doctors now turn to teleconsultation to continue treating their non-COVID regular patients. See how the Northern Mindanao Medical Center (NMMC) standardized Telekonsulta teleconsultation hospital-wide with the help of Smart Communications.
Hospitals are getting packed as cases continue to rise by the day. This situation makes it harder and a lot more dangerous for those with other health issues to physically go for a consultation. This is especially true for the Northern Mindanao Medical Center (NMMC), a public hospital and a COVID referral center for the region.
Teleconsultation involves the hefty use of back and forth messages between the patient and their doctor. This price makes the strategy unlikeable for other public hospitals to adopt. Smart Communications partnered with the hospital to conceive Northern Mindanao Medical Center’s Telekonsulta Service.
The NMMC Telekonsulta Service is available for all the departments of the hospital with a corresponding hotline for each. Dr. Aris Austria, Telekonsulta project leader, says they (doctors) were particularly worried for their regular patients with chronic illnesses and in need of long-term medication.
Smart Communications teamed up with NMMC by providing them with LTE phones with unlimited texts and calls to all networks and data connection. Each phone was assigned to doctors in charge of their departments.
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Thus, with Telekonsulta, doctors can now also give attention to non-critical cases while simultaneously providing an avenue for patients to contact their physicians. Since late March, the NMMC doctors have handled more than 400 consultations, sent out almost 200 electronic prescriptions and facilitated around 50 referrals. The project also let them set appointments for patients who need the necessary clinic visit.
Even so, the region’s DOH identified 4,000 persons under monitoring and around 300 under investigation of COVID. The NMMC doctors admit that there were many limitations to teleconsultation such as misdiagnosis and unideal examinations. The pediatrics was the department who received most calls for teleconsultation. Doctors had to instruct parents to examine their child. However, they had decided that they had no choice but to adapt. It was currently the safest way to accommodate for patients not in a critical state.
The seamless constant back-and-forth exchange of information also helped greatly in this effort. Dr. Austria appreciates how reliable Smart was especially on the unlimited texts and calls.
He also goes on the hardships the institution faced to implement teleconsulation. Their Telekonsulta team had to fix several things from volunteers to guidelines to get NMMC Telekonsulta up and running. However, the team was able to keep it going once the proper equipment and appropriate systems were built.
The Covid-19 pandemic is still far from over. This is what the medical scene is seeing to cope and deal with. The risks are getting bigger as well with it remaining for longer and increasingly more critical interventions. Undeniably, as we see teleconsultation be part of NMMC’s new normal, technology’s part on the country’s coping will only become larger.
Learn more on Smart ‘s role to NMMC’s Telekonsulta on their Official Facebook Page.
