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In a session titled ‘Primary Health Care: From Public Policy to Comprehensive Care’, moderated by Dr. Guillermo Soberón, Dr. Roberto Tapia Conyer, General Director of the Carlos Slim Foundation, presented the keynote lecture “Feasibility of Primary care in our environment”.
In his presentation, Dr. Tapia reflects on the current state of the Health System in Mexico, the developing processes and the expected results.
What he proposes is a reengineering of the National Primary Care model to have health services that fulfill four great characteristics:
- Ubiquitous health services, in terms of physical space.
- Continuous health services, talking about their temporality.
- Preventive health services, with respect to the operation scheme.
- Person-centered health services, when talking about approach.
The proposal of Carlos Slim Foundation (FCS) to support this reengineering is its CASALUD model.
“We developed the CASALUD model and have been perfecting it for more than 9 years. It is already a success in the fight against [chronic] diseases. Thanks to the partnership with the Ministry of Health, it is now possible to follow 1.8 million patients in 12,460 clinics,” said Dr. Roberto Tapia.
Today, CASALUD offers to Mexico the Quality of Care Diabetes Index, which allows measuring and comparing the performance of each of these clinics, in an open and transparent way. This is an unprecedented case worldwide.
On the other hand, the CASALUD Model supports, through the Integrated Measurement for Timely Detection (Medición Integrada para la Detección Oportuna, MIDO), timely prevention of chronic diseases. So far, 780 thousand people have already been tested. Most of them believed they were healthy, but the screening showed that 13.3% were prediabetic and 5.8% have diabetes and did not know it. Thanks to MIDO, all these people are continuously monitored for prevent, delay or even reverse the disease.
From this experience and results, during the last year the CSF has worked to bring CASALUD to more and more people, including visiting house to house to detect diseases. Through local alliances, this care model has been implemented in Hidalgo, Querétaro, Tabasco and in Mexico City.
“We must cover the minimums in each of these concepts to ensure a proven and reliable Health System,” concluded Dr. Tapia.
