Health hotline ‘gets more than 1.4mn calls’

The hotline 16000 for the health sector has received more than 1.4mn calls since its launch to coincide with the Covid-19 outbreak in Qatar, a senior official of Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) said yesterday.
Nasser Saeed al-Nuimi, general co-ordinator of the hotlines, deputy chief quality officer and co-director of the Hamad Healthcare Quality Institute (HHQI) at HMC, was speaking to local Arabic daily Arrayah. “These calls include 186,000 for urgent medical consultations, 500,000 for medicine delivery and prescriptions, and 661,000 for queries and remarks related to Covid-19, with 16,205 of these transferred to the entities concerned,” the official explained.
As much as 97% of the remarks and queries were accordingly addressed. The effectiveness of response to the calls increased from 79.2 % to 98.6% by September 20 after the employees concerned were provided with a procedural guidebook in June.
“The hotline 16000 has eased the load on the emergency number 999 at the National Command Center, and reflected positively on the ambulance services,” al-Nuimi stated.
He explained that co-ordinators have been appointed at the Ministry of Public Health, HMC, and the PHCC to deal with escalating issues, besides maintaining contact points with the government entities concerned in the health sector.
Effective co-ordination was maintained among all the stakeholders in the health sector to keep the 16000 hotline call centre updated with the latest information so as to disseminate in turn to the callers with regard to Covid-19, such as health quarantine, application for disease-free certificates, sick leave application and others.
In a six-month period until the end of March, the medicine delivery services without fees benefited 228,814 Qatari and expatriate patients who called 16000. The official recalled that the government had waived the cost of medicine delivery for six months but now with all the pharmacies at the health facilities open for patients, the services became optional with QR30 fixed fees for Qataris and non-Qataris alike.