How to stop tsunami of chronic diseases?
Last week, in the AmCham offices, Health MInister Adam Vojtěch led a panel discussion on what could be done to improve prevention of chronic diseases with prof. Vladimír Palička of the Society of Metabolic Diseases, Dr. Petr Šmach of the Škoda Employee Insurer, VZP ČR Deputy Head David Šmehlík, prof. Richard Češka of the Czech Internist Society, and Dr. Petr Šonka of the General Practitioners Society. AmCham Health Care Council Chairs Zuzana Kaifoszová, MD, MBA, ACC and Tomáš Březina of Amgen put together an overview and questions to be discussed.
And the conclusions? Centers of prevention can take some of the load off general practitioners by helping to educate at-risk patients on how they can avoid diseases and how often they should be screened. We need to do something to situation concerning osteoporosis: 750,000 patients have it, and there is an 80% treatment gap. Insurers and employers could work together to motivate employees to pay more attention to preventing disease. General practitioners are the front line in the fight to improve prevention and digitizing processes could help quite a bit.
Now that we are agreed on some steps, we will tie our laces and start to take them.
Author: wms, AmCham
Log In