Countryside demographics make family doctors converge.
Editorial: doctors to become «central»
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Thinking of the local elections, this fall… How many would mentally join the imaginary sound-mind-party of the newly retired Auditor General Mihkel Oviir – not attempting to make voters believe in fancy fairytales? Politically, it might be beneficial to blast big speeches on flowers and songbirds, but then comes the day when elections posters are blowing in the wind. Revealing reality impossible to deny.
Rural population is in decline. At the same time, people need daily support and quality services. As revealed by 2011 National Audit Office report, the current system fails to motivate family doctors move to the countryside – reasons being low income, difficulty in finding substitutes for holidays and trainings, etc. Forget «our own village» doctors – there are regions in Estonia even now where first contact medical care has moved kilometres away from patients. This has largely been an auto-pilot process, assisted by indecision – from the same soap opera as queues at emergency medicine departments.
The first contact care centres convergence plan, being birthed by cooperation of Estonian Society of Family Doctors and Ministry of Social Affairs, is a step forward. Sure: a network like this could have come in handy, long ago. But better late than never. A single family doctor in a small place could not afford a state-of-the-art environment. In various locations around Estonia, family doctors’ working conditions vary greatly. A family doctor working alone has not chance even to talk to colleagues, not to mention consulting them. A centre would allow for all that, as well as cost-efficiency.
Important, also, is quality of services. In medical centres to come, with many family doctors practicing together, this can presumably be improved. Therefore, a change like this is better for the patient – all told. The more so that people do visit doctors and tend to their business in local hubs, anyhow.
Rivers can’t be made to change directions, of course, but waterflows can somewhat be directed. Let’s keep that in mind in the context of the next 7-year EU budget (2014–2020), providing us with real opportunities to execute decisions which, in the end, will prove more effective than hundreds of pages filled with nice development plans –confined to meetings, desk drawers and presentations. The family doctors system reform plan might serve as a template for many a sector.