DUBAI: Round-the-clock operations and urgent care by primary healthcare centers (PHCs) at the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) have helped reduce the number of non-emergency cases at Rashid hospital’s Trauma Centre, top health officials said.
“In mid-2013, we decided to provide 24-hour service and urgent care across two primary healthcare centers so that patients who needed urgent but not emergency care could visit primary healthcare centers rather than go to Rashid Hospital’s Emergency Centre, which caters to emergency cases such as poly-trauma, cardiac arrest and strokes, among others,” said Dr Alia Mohammed Rafie, consultant family medicine and head of Al Barsha Primary Health Centre, said.
“Over the years,” Dr. Rafie added, “patients have become well aware of our services and we have seen a steady increase in the number of patients visiting the 24-hour clinics.”
In 2017, over 181,000 patients visited the Al Barsha Primary Health Centre. Of these, 21,000 went during the night shift.
The primary healthcare centers are capable of effectively treating urgent cases and are equipped with multi-disciplinary specialists.
Meantime, Dr. Elham Al Nuaimi, head of the 24-hour service unit in Al Barsha Health Centre said the service is of vital importance to the community because it helps provide better access to healthcare; as well, the geographical proximity helps reduce the pressure that hospital emergency departments face due to non-emergency cases.
She said the PHCs should be the first-point-of-contact for patients except for those with emergencies.
For her part, Dr. Ayesha Al Basti, specialist family physician and acting head of Nadd Al Hamar Health Center, said PHCs provides services including outpatient family medicine, child health services, antenatal care, dental services, some specialist clinics like ENT, ophthalmology, dermatology in addition to supportive services such as pharmacy, X-ray and laboratory services.
In 2017, the centers also started a headache clinic after studying the number of cases of headaches they have been receiving. A neurologist from DHA hospital and a family physician attended this clinic ensuring that specialized care is provided to patients in primary healthcare centres.
The PHCs also offer preventive screening packages at discounted rates including women’s health, men’s health, adolescent’s health, smoking cessation package, to name a few.
In addition, the DHA primary healthcare sector regularly holds health education and screening programs for various diseases across its health centers.
