Problems Remain To Obtain Appointments at the Dental Hospital Quinquela Martin
<p style="text-align: justify;">Six years after the first report of the AGCBA, there are irregularities that are not solved: difficulties to request an appointment, low average patient care and delays of two months to get an appointment for surgery. While there were improvements, such as the centralization of patient information in medical records, there is still room for improvement.</p>
It has been six years since the first edition of The Auditor.info. On that occasion, a report that revealed the shortcomings of the Dental Children Hospital Benito Quinquela Martin was part of the cover. For this new anniversary, we publish a follow-up work done by the Auditor General of the City of Buenos Aires (AGCBA, for its acronym in Spanish), which states that "more than half of the irregularities were not resolved."
A critical situation still coexists with the Hospital's services, such as the lack of access to shifts: "To make an appointment with a dentist for the first time, only one line is available, one day a month (the third Monday), in a time range which coincides with business hours" the report states.
This monitoring the AGCBA performed at the Dental Children Hospital Benito Quinquela Martin showed that "from the eleven irregularities detected in 2008, six have still not improved." Among them are the issues of productivity, after "a decline in annual benefits offered": in 2004 there were 114,623, for 2008 fell to 92,373 and in 2011 barely exceeded 82,000.
As is highlighted by the report, approved in October of last year, "it serves fewer patients than it should, mainly in the Surgery and Integral Dental services." The first sector "planned to provide coverage to 226 people per month, while effectively attended an average of 100." Dentistry, "productivity is around 54% and 77%." It is clear that with these numbers that the AGCBA considered "the level of progress was not satisfactory."
The times to access a shift have not improved. For the Surgery services "the delay was 53 days." The hospital staff reported that "for people seeking assistance for the first time, the delay is between 20 and 30 days, while for the operating room it extends to 60." Facing these times, "an improvement over the 2008 observed for those patients who attend the center for the first time, but not for those who need surgery."
After six years, "shifts in productivity also did not show progress and reached only 54%," data that arises from the difference between the supply of professional hours and the number of patients actually treated.
As for the service time, that is, the duration of the consultation, the data is not encouraging because the AGCBA again stated that "the level of progress was not satisfactory." They stipulated 30 minutes of care services such as orthopedics or orthodontics, but "deviations ranging between 54 and 120 for the first sector and between 69 and 143 minutes for the second were recorded."
The Improvements
The situation of the Medical Records (HC) is one of the issues that had a satisfactory level of progress. It is that in its previous audit, the City Watchdog found that "sectors of Speech Therapy, Psychology, Orthopedics and Orthodontics did not use medical records as a single document for the patient, so the records were duplicated." But since then, the end of the field work in December 2012, things changed and verified that "in the HC all the features of the various professionals with the specialist’s signature are recorded."
It was also positive for the Audit the achievements that occurred in supervision of residents. Let’s recall that in any practice they must be supervised by a medical professional belonging to the permanent staff of the Hospital. The report notes that "although the percentage of patients seen on guard remained at 33, all cases were observed by a responsible." For this reason, the AGCBA decided to "lift the observation" considering that the level of progress from 2008 to 2011 was "satisfactory."
It was highlighted also the compliance with the law 2247 of 2006 which establishes the obligation of the existence of a Book of Complaints, suggestions and claims in all units.
The internal circuit of request for reparation of movable property had a "emerging" improvement. Although since 2010 most of the equipment is outsourced the hospital's dental chairs situation is particular: "repair of the 41 seats depend on the maintenance manager that is about to obtain the voluntary retirement."
