Doha: Health authorities have taken a number of steps to ensure the safety of the elderly in Qatar in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) during COVID-19. This includes establishing a Geriatric Urgent Care Centre to care for older patients with health emergencies, said Dr. Irfan Muneeb, Consultant Geriatrician, Rumeilah Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC).
“Global evidence indicates that older adults, especially those with chronic health conditions, are at higher risk of getting severely ill if they contract the COVID-19. Our chairperson, Dr. Hannadi Al Hamad, recognised this earlier on in the course of this pandemic and started working on providing safe and effective health services to the elderly in Qatar,” he told The Peninsula.
“The most significant step was to minimise in any form or shape for our elderly to come to health care facilities unless it was deemed necessary. The Department of Geriatrics embraced the concept of telehealth with the help of the Health Information & Communications Technology Department of HMC. The core aspect of the services remains the same but the service delivery was changed. The service was also re-designed to provide innovative ways of service delivery,” he added.
Telehealth services include “National Helpline and Reassurance Services” which is the dedicated Geriatric Helpline under the National Helpline 16000. It has a proactive calling out service named “Telephone Reassurance Services”.
“In addition, the most important arm of the service which COVID-19 times have generated is the Geriatric Urgent Care Centre. This is for our elderly who have a health condition but at the same time they rightly don’t want to attend the main emergency department of the hospital. The Urgent Care Centre takes on the patient for a focused assessment and they attend at a specified time of the day. They are examined, investigated and a treatment plan is initiated,” said Dr. Muneeb.
“In addition to that, we are continuing with our inpatient acute and long term Geriatric Services. I would also like to mention that we have increased capacity so that we can accommodate and admit our elderly patients that return from abroad for special Geriatric and Rehabilitation services. They can be brought straight to our dedicated quarantine facilities and ensuring that it allows us to offer care while we make preparations for care in-home,” he said. All the consultations by the Geriatric Department are provided through a virtual format which is in two modes. One is the regular telephone consultation services. Second is the Face to Face Video Consultation. This is unique and this is the first Virtual Clinic that we have set in the Department of Geriatrics across HMC.
“This video consultation is with the help of the Ministry of Public Health, who are supporting us with specialised software to conduct a consultation with all the essential legality and confidentiality,” said Dr. Muneeb.
“We have two broad categories of services that are provided through these formats. One is the regular and specialized clinics and the other is the National Reassurance Services that are mentioned earlier. The clinics that are covered include General Geriatric clinics, specialized memory clinic, falls clinic, ortho geriatric clinic and rapid access services,” he said.
In addition to the regular clinics Geriatric Department has the adhoc clinic which in pre COVID-19 times was called as walk in clinic.
Patient and families could come to this clinic anytime when they needed to attend due to clinical need. It also works in a virtual way either by telephone or video link.
