The Dystopian Times, 19. Put the Scissors Away.

This afternoon, I had my phone appointment with the doctor. Talk about speed!

BTP (Before the Pandemic), primary care doctors had been complaining for ages that they had little time to attend to each patient. Depending on the day, doctors could only give between three and five minutes to each patient before having waiting times grow long. They had been demanding at least between ten and fifteen minutes for ages. Now, they dedicate even less time.

I got the call just after seven, the hour of the appointment. He asked me what was wrong, I explained, he asked a question to confirm, I repeated. He said, fine, that he would ask for a blood analysis, and that I should go pick up the paper at reception, where I would be given a day and time to go get blood drawn. Good-bye. The call took forty-four seconds.

In the end, it would have been just as productive to have sat in front of him, because I had to drive down to the clinic, anyway, for the analysis appointment. If having the appointment by phone was an attempt to avoid possible contagion by not going to the clinic, in this case, it backfired. So, I drove down, was given the paper, along with a tube to collect urine, and the date of next Monday morning, with another phone appointment to find out results another week later. 

Our primary health care system was one of the better ones. It had problems, I won't deny that. But you could call up for an appointment, or get one online, and you could see the doctor, sometimes the same day, for whatever ailed you. Yes, there were days when the doctor's caseload made you wait for a while, and then they didn't have the time to answer all your questions, but it worked. The problems were with the waiting lists for the specialists, that could take up to a year (sometimes more) to see you. But you were treated from the beginning. When my father went for a routine blood analysis once, the primary care doctor we had then noticed that he had a slight anemia. She set the ball rolling and, within months, he was surgically cured of a Stage I cancer that had appeared with no other warning. We had to pay nothing at all. Our tax money paid for all the tests, the surgery, the medication, the hospitalization, everything. 

Both the national health system, and the regional systems, have been suffering cutbacks for years. In normal circumstances, it should be considered inadmissable that a doctor can only have three minutes to attend to a patient. Or that a patient should wait a year to see a specialist. The pandemic caught everyone with their pants down. Yes, the sheer numbers of infected in the spring put the entire system with its back against the wall. But it shouldn't have gotten so saturated. There should have been enough financing to quickly move things around so no one would go untreated, both from the virus, and from all the other daily pathologies. 

And now, while things are obviously not normal, thanks to the virus, we have had enough time to reorganize everything, and get the system back on track. Instead, because the regional government of Galicia doesn't want the budget to go haywire, doctors are told to do phone appointments so they can dedicate more time to tracking down contacts of those infected with the virus. No, it doesn't make sense. The healthcare system can't be held down by such budgetary restraints. We all lose.

Life continues.