eHealth Call Centre

The center is a high-resolution service for urgent/emergency situations, as it can send an ambulance, doctor or nurse to the home. It can also make appointments with the Primary Care Referral Teams. Among all the functions it performs is the attention to health demand, both in calls received from the specific Council telephone (900 20 30 50) and calls received on the specific telephones of the 3 Osakidetza Emergency Coordination Centres, performing a triage to assign a level of urgency to the call and monitoring chronic patients both telemonitored (COPD and CHF) and not telemonitored (Pluripathological and Palliative). Another programme that has considerably increased the activity of Consejo Sanitario is the Telecare Service (elderly or frail people). It also collaborates in different Research Projects, such as suicide prevention.
When the pandemic arrived and because the health advice service became the reference telephone number for the public (as well as continuing with its usual activity), it needed to be resized due to the increase in calls and sick leave of the usual staff. Likewise, referral circuits to Primary Care and Continuous Care Points were established. These new circuits, together with the continuous change of protocols and procedures, obliged the nursing staff to be constantly updated.
Once the pandemic activity has stabilized, the Suicide Prevention Programme has begun in coordination with 112 and the specific suicide prevention telephone number.