IMSS to Prioritize Patients Left Behind by the Pandemic

Mexico’s IMSS is focusing its efforts to bring care to those left without during the course of the pandemic. In the following days, the institute will begin its Fourth National Regular Medical Services Recovery Campaign to incorporate extraordinary actions aimed at improving productivity in medical care.

The decision to return to the provision of these services took place in April 2021. Since then, three campaigns have taken place, allowing the institute to perform about 2.2 million specialty consultations and 14.7 million family medicine consultations, including 2.4 million diabetes and 3.4 million hypertension screenings. Through these campaigns, the institute has also performed 158,000 surgeries, including 335 transplants: 167 kidney, 122 corneal and 46 bone marrow transplants. In addition, the institute retook its cancer prevention programs for women's health and performed 740,000 cervical-uterine cancer screenings, 1.1 million breast cancer screenings by physical examination and 77,402 mammography tests.

These campaigns also aim to strengthen all of IMSS’s services in its three levels of care. During the second and third iterations of this campaign, IMSS strengthened first level care, emphasizing that follow-up and therapeutic adherence are essential for controlling chronic degenerative diseases. The institute also strengthened its second and third levels of care by reinforcing outpatient services for the specialties with the highest demand, which include angiology, cardiology, general surgery, internal medicine, nephrology, pulmonology, ophthalmology, pediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, traumatology, orthopedics and urology. The institute also prioritized pediatric surgery, plastic and reconstructive surgery, neurosurgery, ENT and surgical oncology.

IMSS’ s fourth national campaign aims is to recover quality medical services and strengthen the provision of family medicine, internal medicine, ophthalmology, traumatology and orthopedics. The campaign will also reinforce general surgery, traumatology and orthopedics, ophthalmology and urology. The institute will also perform some transplants and increase its early disease detection activities through screening for diabetes, hypertension, breast cancer and cervical cancer.

This event will coincide with the launching of Integral Care Protocols for Arterial Hypertension and Diabetes Mellitus, aimed at improving the quality of care. In addition to screening patients with diabetes and hypertension, the institute will provide comprehensive care and assign them newly acquired medications to increase control of the disease, reduce complications and hospitalizations and improve quality of life.

The program is expected to include the country's central region, which had been in red or orange status on the epidemiological traffic light for several months and had focused on COVID-19. It expects the participation of 960 last-year residents from multiple specialties.