Dubai: In a bid to ease the pressure on emergency services, the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) introduced 24-hour urgent care across two primary health care centres, effectively reducing the number of non-emergency cases at Rashid Hospital’s Trauma Centre.
During the first four months of this year, more than 28,000 people made use of the 24-hour service at Nad Al Hammar and Al Barsha health centres.
Providing statistics, Dr Manal Taryam, CEO of primary health care at the DHA, said: “The total number of patients that visited the 24-hour clinics at these centres during the first four months of the year was 28,595. During the same time, the number of patients that visited Rashid Hospital’s Trauma Centre reduced from 52,644 in 2013 to 46,380 this year.”
She said the introduction of the urgent care units at these two centres and the fact that they function 24 hours has directly impacted on alleviating the pressure that Dubai’s Trauma and Emergency Centre at Rashid Hospital faces. “In June 2013, we decided to provide 24-hour service and urgent care across two primary healthcare centres so that patients who needed urgent but not emergency care could visit primary health-care centres rather than going to Rashid Hospital’s Emergency Centre which caters to emergency cases such as poly-trauma, cardiac arrest, strokes, etc.”
She said the two primary health-care centres are capable of effectively treating urgent cases and are equipped with multi-disciplinary specialists.
Dr Manal added that the introduction of these services has been successful in providing better access to health care for residents and is in line with the growing health-care needs of the emirate.
