Medical Concierge

Just recently my mom got a message from her public hospital that she will only be able to get her monthly appointment as early as September. The Covid-19 pandemic has really forced our public healthcare system to start doing triage on their patients appointments. It is understandable and necessary in an over-burdened system. However this means she can’t collect the meds she needs that she gets for free. So she scrapes her Diabetes medication together monthly since two months ago.

I never took much note of something I heard in passing from a friend of mine. She is employed full time,and also relies on a public hospital for her chronic medication. She would always tell me about having to take a full day off to collect her medication. Having been through public hospital care it is best to put the day aside for the consultation or the medication collection. You are lucky if you can get both done on the same day. Anyway some people in her community took the initiative to start collecting people’s medication for a small fee. I asked around and this informal set up of collecting people’s meds has been going on for some time now. The patient just needs to write a letter stating who shall be collecting the medication. Her concierge collects for about 15 people. She walks to the clinic, hand delivers, and receives payment. It is simple, smart and such a great way to reduce the amount of people that have to sit in a waiting room for hours on end. It reduces the waiting time too, and from what I could gather these concierge’s all live in the same area as their clients. Not only do they reduce the carbon footprint, but their client’s are not losing a day’s work, they contribute to the efficacy and pace of the clinic or hospital’s output for the day.

It works because it is not burdened by over-regulation that would just reduce it to an app, and complicating the concierge’s work. We know modernity is about improvements and technological advancement, but with this we really don’t need it. My gripe is with the local department of Health. Why have they not jumped the gun on this? Said friend does not want to send the concierge to the clinic anymore. She has lost a few clients like this because of fears around the pandemic. Which is valid. However the department issued the directive for permission letters. So they are aware people collect in bulk for groups of patients. The clinics are either limiting intakes or not seeing people at all. The concierges could have been semi-regulated to collect, this way people can still get their medication instead of trying to make plans to get it privately which costs more and was never budgeted for. All the benefits exist especially within the pandemic we are trying to combat with limited contact. We need government departments to meet us halfway, navigate around a crisis and still get people their often times life-saving medication.