The hospital outpatient clinic
Queues, delays and the role of the outpatient clinic in easing pressure on hospitals.
The outpatient clinic is the part of the hospital that treats without admitting. Pedro wrote about it in 2006 to explain a function little understood by the public: resolving, with scheduled appointments and follow-up, what would otherwise become an emergency.
Queues and delays appear as consequences of an undersized outpatient service. The text argues that investing in this layer relieves the emergency room and the wards, and is cheaper than adding beds.
It is a manager's reasoning made by a clinician. Pedro never held a public management post, but he wrote about care organisation with the authority of someone who had passed through the whole structure, from SAMDU to the consulting room.
This article is part of the historical archive of Pedro Moretti Guedes. It should be read as a document of its time: Medicine, pharmacology and health recommendations have changed since publication.
The original clipping is preserved by the family and will be published here once the scan can be checked against the original.