The Department of Health has expanded the management of sick leave directly from the hospital to major outpatient surgery and births, which will avoid about 100,000 annual trips by users to the CAPs to carry out these procedures.
This was reported this Thursday by the Department of Health in a statement, in which it is recalled that, until now, discharges were only given in the hospitals of the Comprehensive Health System of Catalonia (SISCAT) for scheduled or urgent hospital admission.
This measure has been tested at the Parc Taulí Hospital in Sabadell (Barcelona) and since this March its users can now request the processing of this type of sick leave there directly.
For their part, the Arnau de Vilanova and Santa Maria Hospitals, in the capital of Lleida, will be the next to provide this service starting in the first fortnight of April.
In the case of major outpatient surgery (MAS), which is a major surgical intervention but does not require admission to a hospital, it is estimated that practically all patients in an active work situation, more than 97%, could request a sick leave according to your diagnosis.
Of this high percentage, 10% will require a leave of less than five days, so the hospital will issue the leave and discharge from work in the same administrative act and the patient will not have to go to their primary care center to request them.
As for the rest of the patients, the hospital will only discharge them and the follow-up will be the responsibility of primary care until recovery and then definitive discharge.
Health estimates that hospital management of sick leave will save between 64,000 and 85,000 trips by patients to primary care.
Regarding women’s births, the new procedure that will be activated from hospitals is the discharge for those who at the time of birth already had active sick leave.
According to Health, 41% of women who enter the hospital to have their baby are in this situation, so the new management can avoid almost 17,000 annual trips to the CAP.
The management of sick leave from hospitals depending on the medical circumstances is part of the framework of the debureaucratization of primary care promoted by Salud, to free the CAPs from administrative pressure.
