Miguel Ángel Ponce asks to bring these professionals closer to
health areas or patients' homes
The deputy remembers that the waiting list in this
specialty has risen 27% in the last six months
February 19, 2020.- The Popular Group deputy and spokesperson on matters of
Health, Miguel Ángel Ponce, achieved today the improvement of the health service
physiotherapy and occupational therapists in health centers, upon approval
an initiative debated in the Parliament of the Canary Islands, despite the refusal of the
PSOE and Podemos.
Ponce recalled that “there are very few physiotherapists on the Service staff.”
Canary of Health and much less those of Primary Care that have
this service, despite the important work they provide at this level
care and that would help reduce the waiting list in the hospitals that have
increased by 27 percent in the last six months.”
The initiative of the Popular Group urges the Government of the Canary Islands to develop and
launch basic multidisciplinary rehabilitation units –
including physical therapists, occupational therapists and in coordination with
rehabilitation doctors - in health centers with an increase in staff
these specialists as well as implementing home care programs to
chronic patients thus avoiding unnecessary stays in hospitals.
“The truth is that 83 percent of patients with chronic pain are treated
in Primary Care, and many of them would not have to return to consultation or
emergencies if they had physiotherapy treatment and treatment
appropriate pharmacology,” Ponce pointed out.
Likewise, the Popular Group's proposal also requests to enhance the
presence of physiotherapists in hospitalization units; optimize and
enhance coordination with concerted rehabilitation centers to generate
operating synergies; enhance the role of these specialists in
preventive training material as well as educational activities for
health and create afternoon agendas in the rehabilitation services of
hospitals of the Canary Islands.
The popular deputy indicates that “we cannot lose sight of the progressive
aging of the population of the Canary Islands, which often occupy a
hospital bed due to some loss of autonomy that is not always
related to the disease causing their admission, and that is where the
physiotherapists and occupational therapists, in coordination with doctors
rehabilitators, play a fundamental role that has been recognized today.”
Miguel Ángel Ponce thanked the Board of Directors of Physiotherapists of
Canary Islands and the Professional Association of Occupational Therapists of
Canarias (APTOCA) for its help and involvement in this Non-Law Proposition,
“which is still a fair and historic demand for these groups,
but also for potential users.”
Finally, the popular deputy indicated that “it is inconceivable that having 46
Primary Care physiotherapists throughout the Archipelago, the party that
manages Health in the Canary Islands, the PSOE, has not seen the need to
address this deficit and improve care not only for chronic patients
but of any canary that could require this service, something that is
will be achieved thanks to the work of the Popular Party,” he concluded.
