Primary care teams will provide care directly to nursing home users from next year

People who are living in care homes for the elderly can be treated there by primary care teams (EAP). This is a measure that had already been tested during the Covid-19 pandemic and will now be applied structurally. The Government will invest €15 million, which will go towards hiring 117 doctors and 130 more nurses. The new care model will be deployed within a year and will get underway in the coming months in the teams that have a high degree of coordination with the care homes, which represent 72% of the total. The remaining portion will get underway in the second quarter of 2024.

This was announced by the Minister of Health, Manel Balcells; the Minister of Social Rights, Carles Campuzano, and the spokesperson for the Government, Patrícia Plaja, at the press conference following the Executives meeting.

“It is a significant decision, which changes the care of people in need and which we are sure will greatly improve their quality of life and their care”, said Balcells. For the Minister of Health, people living in a care home “are at home, it is their usual address” and therefore, “they must have the necessary coverage from primary care like any other citizen”.

According to the Minister, “it’s one of the lessons learned from the pandemic: we had to offer different types of care to residents. It is a decision that will greatly improve the quality of life, an example of social and health integration, a joint people-centred vision that is beginning to unfold within the framework of the future Social and Health Care Agency”.

Currently, in Catalonia there are 1,042 care homes for the elderly; 951 residences and 91 residential homes, with 61,498 places. Of the total of 376 EAPs, 317 (84.3%) have at least one care home assigned to their area of influence.

“This agreement is part of the strategy to deploy integrated social and health care. The goal is for all elderly people living in residential care to be cared for by primary care centres”, emphasised the Minister of Social Rights, Carles Campuzano.

Residents usually have significant health care needs: they have an average of 9.2 chronic diseases (with a 57% prevalence of dementia); an annual mortality of 20% (50% need palliative care); almost 90% are classified in the categories of maximum clinical complexity or high risk, and 97% have a high degree of dependence.

As Campuzano has highlighted, since the pandemic, a number of actions have already been carried out and improvements have been made, and it has been noted that in many cases teams and care homes are already working together. So, in the last twelve months, 92% of residents have been visited in person by their EAP nurse, and 65% by their doctor. A specific census of care homes and residents has been drawn up, which did not exist before the pandemic, and joint training has been delivered to 15,532 professionals from care homes and primary care teams, among other improvements.

Source: govern.cat