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“They told us over the phone what preventive tests we needed to do.” – At first glance, such news seems like good news. Finally, the much-needed health prevention of Bulgarians will increase. However, a deeper look reveals that the application provided for this purpose will hardly be particularly useful for the elderly, people with diabetes. People with mobility difficulties or who are now unable to access this information or simply do not participate in it.
According to the study,trend“Since the end of last year, 25% of Bulgarians have not had their annual health prevention, and 11% have never had their annual preventive check-up. Experts say one of the reasons is the lack of sufficient information for patients and a low level of health prevention education.
These data clearly demonstrate that efforts must be made to increase coverage of preventive care.
What will we get in September?
Electronic notifications about preventive checkups only work if the patient goes to an “Information Service” office, the relevant regional health insurance fund or the regional health supervision department to pair his mobile phone with the “eHealth” app. This way he can also access his electronic patient file.
But when you change your phone or delete an app by mistake, you have to go again. The original idea was to serve as an alternative to the qualified signature pairing method.
Will it work?
“In the digital world, anyone of us who has access to a device knows everything about ourselves without needing to be reminded. In any case, this information is more limited for people, due to the lack of the corresponding device and access rights. , they will not be able to use the service, which should be the goal, and available to everyone without wasting time pairing devices, etc.,” commented medical-legal expert Dr. Maria Petrova.
“If we want it to be digital and ‘smart’, it has to be as close as possible to the user, to the person who needs the information,” she added. He gave an example: “Think of an elderly person – 65-75 years old, with limited mobility, how far can he walk to do this. Or even a young staff member – he has to spend time to match with someone. Will they take him off work to do this?” asked lawyer Dr Petrova.
She is convinced that health prevention for Bulgarians is an issue that needs to be addressed: “But apparently there are still not enough digital smart projects in this direction. We are trying to get the Commission and report politically that we have implemented an idea, come what may (a common verb that I think does not exist)”.
“The goal is not to benefit society, but to say it in the next election”We promised and we did“But how it does that, whether it works, whether it’s effective, whether it works for people, are not the subjects of the study,” the medical law expert said.
However, she firmly believes that “not knowing some of our rights is our problem because health is our primary concern and the sooner a person starts to feel the need to take precautions, the better.”
In practice and at present, it is a legal obligation for patients to take care of their own health. However, there are currently no known cases of fines being imposed for not doing so.
Photo: iStock by Getty Images
Another problem is that in many small settlements where elderly and disabled people live, there is at most one general practitioner and no laboratory, which is an important part of prevention.
According to the Health Insurance Fund, people over 18 years old must pay annually:
- Calculation of Body Mass Index
- Mental status assessment
- Vision test
- Blood pressure measurement
- Electrocardiogram
- In-office urine test using test strips:
– protein
– Glucose
– Ketone bodies
– Urobilinogen/Bilirubin
– pH
-Measure blood glucose in the laboratory in the presence of risk factors.
People between the ages of 30 and 65 get the PKK every 5 years.
For men over 40, have cholesterol and triglycerides tested every 5 years.
For men over age 46 and women over age 50, cholesterol and triglyceride tests should be done every 5 years.
PSA testing is performed every two years during preventive checkups for men over 50 years of age.
For people over 65 years of age, PKK (once a year), cholesterol and triglyceride (every 5 years) checks are also prescribed.
Cholesterol, triglyceride, blood sugar and electrocardiogram, mammogram and PSA examinations during the calendar year are performed on other occasions and are no longer performed during preventive examinations.
In the document, each general practitioner must place information about the type and frequency of preventive examinations and tests that people over 18 undergo in a publicly available place in their office. But without a doctor or an office, we rely on information on the Internet. If elderly and disabled people have access to the Internet and can find out on their own which examinations need to be carried out, the logical question is why they need to pair devices to obtain the same information.
Another separate big topic is ethnic minorities and their immunization coverage. According to the aforementioned “Trends” study, nearly half of people with primary school education or less do not take annual immunizations, and the levels among ethnic minorities are significantly lower. The question here is how this app will attract the idea of regular immunizations among the aforementioned groups.
Announcing the “eHealth” action concept, NHIF Director Professor Momchil Mavrov said: “We will rely on patients to become the best controllers of the health insurance system.”
Hopefully, health professionals will be able to take into account exactly those patients that are not currently covered by health prevention when developing further ideas.
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