Introduction:

In the COVID-19 pandemic context, the TraceCOVID-19 online platform was created. Additionally, a daily phone call, made by family doctors or nurses, was recommended by the government’s Directorate-General of Health for all the patients who were suspected of, or infected by, SARS-CoV-2. With the rising number of suspected cases of the disease, it was essential to reduce the need for contacts to the strictly needed, centralizing the monitoring on the patients themselves and breaking the Inverse Care Law.

Objectives:

To create a call center that would facilitate the COVID-19 patients’ monitoring, reducing the need for daily contacts, and allowing healthcare professionals to choose a contact periodicity based on the patients’ symptoms, risk factors, and diagnostic test results forecast. To place the patients at the center of care, promoting their autonomy.

Method:

Creation and parameterization of an online call center through the Amazon Connect® solution; creation and sharing of a protocol based on this monitoring model with all of Almada-Seixal’s primary healthcare professionals; creation of a shared Excel® worksheet for internal organization and definition of contact periodicity.

Results:

The project was active from the 26th of April to the 15th of July 2020. During this period, it was possible to reduce daily contacts by 58.5%. The most frequently chosen contact periodicity was a call every three days. The call center received an average of 52 telephone calls per day.

Discussion/Conclusion:

The existence of a call center allowed the extension of the interval between contacts, reduced the medical and nursing team workhours dedicated to the TraceCOVID-19 monitoring, and freed human resources that became available to resume other healthcare activities. It was possible to optimize the clinical monitoring model for COVID-19 patients, based on proximity and patient-centered care.

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