Amsterdam GPs are going to call high-risk unvaccinated people
If this method works, says Stella Zonneveld, vice-chairman of the crisis team of all Amsterdam general practitioners and medical director of Roha, of which two hundred Amsterdam general practitioners are affiliated. The first procedures are started in the neighborhoods with the lowest vaccination coverage in the city: New West (66 percent), Southeast (68 percent) and North (74 percent). In all of Amsterdam, 75 percent is fully vaccinated. Nationally this is 84.7 percent. In the neighborhoods where most people can boost their vaccination coverage. That works little by little. The hope is that this project of the general practitioners will provide solace.
mini pilot
But the big question is whether this will work, says Zonneveld. “It is a lot of extra work for a GP, so we first want to know whether this makes sense.” A mini-pilot was held last summer, in which approximately 600 patients were called in by trained medical students in a general practice in Osdorp. The lists didn’t knock it right, and because it was vacation time, many people were unreachable, says. Ultimately, fourteen people are vaccinated. Zonneveld thinks this is a poor result.
But, if she does, the pilot has improved. The lists of people who are attacked are better updated and this time the own GP calls the unvaccinated. “We notice that it makes a difference if your own GP calls, because patients trust and know them.”
According to Zonneveld, this is possible because the general practitioner seeks very targeted contact with the most vulnerable unvaccinated patients. “We use the early warning system, where as a general practitioner you can weigh an infection well against the risk of becoming very ill.”
Urgency
The call lists that GPs print out are ranked by urgency. So according to the statistics, patient one on the list has the highest chance of landing in hospital with Covid. “If the people at the top of the list said to be vaccinated anyway, then that really disease for themselves, and fewer hospital admissions.”
It is a huge job for GPs who are already considerably overloaded in this time. A GP in Zuidoost can have a call list of two hundred people. Because a general practitioner knows his own patients, it is possible to whine about how promising a phone call is, but it remains an enormous task.
Zonneveld also acknowledges this. There is a great shortage of doctor’s assistants and practice nurses, which makes it difficult for practices to get around their schedules. “There is also a lot of outages because people become infected or have to be quarantined. Waiting lists in mental health care also put a lot of pressure on GP practices. We would like to help, but then you want to be sure that the extra burden caused by calling unvaccinated people also makes sense.”