The Health Ministry is improving the service of the Anticoagulant Clinic as part of overall improvements in the primary healthcare sector.

The aim is to introduce a point-of-care Anticoagulant Clinic in the primary healthcare setting to improve the present centralised laboratory structure.

The clinic will improve patients’ compliance, since they would have the test done in the community, with an immediate result and subsequent immediate adjustment of treatment.

This service will reduce the burden of waiting for the result from the centralised laboratory at Mater Dei Hospital.

The main objectives of the service include providing a safer system for patients who are on anticoagulant treatment. Errors in such treatment can be fatal. Thus, the more we delay, the more we keep such a system running. This point-of-care system will also offload services from Mater Dei to the community in order to have easier patient access and decrease hospital costs.

The service offers a system whereby patients will be given their required dosage imme-diately. This will avoid having to wait for dosage prescription to arrive by post or telephone. It will enable a safer delivery of service concerning a very dangerous drug, which can lead to death if the dosage is misunderstood or inappropriately given.

With this system, patient queries can be addressed straight away, as one can discuss any needed adjustments in dosage immediately with the healthcare provider.

Again, this will avoid any misunderstandings and the healthcare profesional-patient contact will further strengthen better compliance and continuity of care.

The system has also been designed to deal better with the current load of 320 patients daily, of whom 170 attend Mater Dei Hospital. This is because the load from Mater Dei will be distributed among six health centres.

The anticoagulant clinics will be gradually introduced this year in health centres in Qormi, Cospicua, Rabat, Birkirkara, Floriana and Gozo General Hospital.

The initial rollout is planned for early May. Training of doctors and nurses has started and the software is in the adjudication phase.

This system will offload services from Mater Dei to the community to have easier patient access and decrease hospital costs

The introduction of the point-of-care anticoagulant clinic is considered a milestone in the general plan to improve the overall primary healthcare delivery.

As one of the initiatives to cut down on unnecessary bureau-cratic process, as of last Sep-tember, patients suffering from uncomplicated musculoskeletal conditions and who prefer to be referred to public healthcare, may be referred directly by their private family doctors for physiotherapy at healthcentre clinics.

On the other hand, as from last October, the Health Ministry opened up requests for bone density studies to all family doctors to simplify matters.

Patients can now go directly to the health centre doctor or the doctor of their choice to book a bone density examination, whereas before they had to go to a specialist who had a long waiting list of appointments.

Another initiative to cut down on unnecessary bureaucratic processes and increase patient satisfaction is that patients may be referred directly for X-ray investigations at health centres by their private family doctor.

Within the framework of specialised clinics, the Natural Procreative Technoloy clinic was inaugurated last December at the Birkirkara health centre.

This clinic offers a health service for women that monitors and maintains reproductive and gynaecological health.

This service, which was introduced following its success in Gozo, provides an alternative service to that covered by the infertility clinic through IVF.

Primary and community health services are gatekeepers and uniquely provide holistic and patient-centric care within a community set-up.

To further strengthen these concepts, the Health Ministry has embarked on initiatives that will launch outreach services that are nurse-led, like the one introduced in 2013 through the chronic kidney disease prevention clinic.

Moreover, it is encouraging to show interest and be prime movers to take care of patients within specific specialties.

This will continue to strengthen the practice of family medicine and will yield better health outcomes, as family medicine promotes disease prevention and healthcare education.

Dr Farrugia is the outgoing Health Minister.

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