El Department of Health of Dénia has designed and implemented a program aimed at Complex Chronic Patient, which includes dependent people, with limiting and progressive pathologies, polymedicated and who require multiple healthcaredue to functional impairment.
According to Dr. Jose Bataller, Acting Director of Primary Care, "the complex chronic patient is a profile that is increasing, given the demographic trend of an inverted pyramid, with an increasingly aging population in Spain and, to a greater extent, in the Marina Alta, with the considerable increase of retired European residents, who choose this region to live”.
El Complex Chronic Program It is a care circuit that encompasses the care of this type of patient, in any circumstance: from a situation of stability, through an exacerbation or hospitalization itself. The program is managed through the Family and Community Medicine and Nursing Units, with the support of other hospital specialists.
The professionals have developed a comprehensive care plan for the patient, with appointments and tests scheduled throughout the year, with the aim of monitoring their evolution. The program also works on the empowerment of the patient to make him an active subject of his pathology. According to Dr. Bataller, "this set of measures also makes it possible to detect exacerbations early, to act immediately from the health center itself and thus avoid hospital admissions."
The program, which is being piloted in the basic health areas of Ondara y Pedreguer, and which will be extended to all the health centers in the region, acts in a complementary way with other plans of the department, such as that of the palliative patient or the Heart failure. The results are being very good, since they provide advantages, such as the proximity of the patient to their Primary Care teams, comprehensive and multidisciplinary care, -due to the integration of the program with hospital services-, prevention and early approach to decompensation of chronic pathology, the rehabilitation of capacities or the promotion of the autonomy of the patient in his living environment.
