The effects of the pandemic on the health system are being noted.

The Center for Sociological Research (CIS) has published the Health Barometer, which based on a representative sample of 2,500 surveys carried out in March of this year, collects the opinion of the Spanish on the functioning of health after Covid.

And the result leaves clear signs of the

difficulties that primary care

and access to consultations are going through.

Almost 60% of the Spanish population has needed at least one primary care consultation in the last year, but not all of them have achieved it.

One in four was left without it.

Specifically, the CIS data shows that of the total Spanish population, 36.7% did not need any consultation in the last year,

43.6% needed it and got

it , but 15.9% of Spaniards needed be treated by a family doctor and did not get it.

Among the reasons reported by 16% of Spaniards who could not have a primary consultation,

the difficulty of contacting the health center was the main reason (37.4%

of those who could not have their consultation) together with the delay in the appointment by granting it for when he no longer needed it (37.6%).

In addition to these reasons, there are others such as calling him but not calling him later for the consultation (1.5%), not wanting to be attended by phone (2.2%), going directly to the emergency room because he thought that the health center was too saturated (6.3%) or afraid to go because of Covid (0.8%).

In addition to the difficulty of even contacting to make an appointment, there is a

delay in the times to be attended to

.

Among those who did get a consultation, only 10.7% were seen on the same day and 13% the next day, while 66% reported having to wait more than a day because there were no appointments available before (others waited willingly). own or do not remember).

And among those who faced waits of more than a day,

the median delay in getting an appointment was 9 days

.

More than half (54%) of those who got an appointment with their GP but waited more than a day actually faced delays of more than a week.

Most of them did not consult for covid

or bureaucratic issues but for chronic health problems that they already had before the pandemic (27.8%) or for new health problems not related to covid (49.6 %).

In fact, covid was only present in 7.6% of the reasons for the last consultation and

covid sequelae in 8.8%

.

Other more bureaucratic matters such as prescriptions or administrative procedures only represented 1% of the last visits according to those surveyed.

A large part of these PC

consultations have been resolved remotely, either by telephone (39.8%)

, by mail (0.8%) or by video consultation (0.3%).

In person at the consultation, 57.6% of the population served have been attended and 0.5% at home.

Remote care seems to be well accepted by a large part of the population.

According to the CIS survey, 65% agree with making some consultations by phone but others in person, although there is still

31% of the population that asks that all consultations be face-to-face

.

Despite the wait and difficulty of access, the population has given a

6.2 grade to primary care

, in line with the grade given to

specialized care (6.2)

, to hospital emergencies (6.4) and PC emergencies (6.4).

The notable is reserved for

hospital admissions (7.2) and emergencies on 061 and 112 (7.5)

.

As a whole, the Spanish give an

average score of 6.46 to the operation of the National Health System

, although 15% fail it with less than 5 out of 10.

Among the problems that emerge from the CIS figures, the problems of access to medicines due to their price also stand out:

2.5% of all Spaniards

acknowledged having

stopped taking a medicine in the last year for exclusively economic reasons.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

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  • CIS

  • covid 19