translated from Spanish: If you have pending queries in the IMSS or ISSSTE, you can reactivate them

The COVID-19 pandemic caused almost all regular consultations, studies and surgeries to be postponed in the country. Hospitals were focused on the care of this disease and patients with other conditions preferred not to risk contagion.
But with 19 weeks down in cases, in most states, authorities consider it safe to reactivate daily care in health institutions, something that is already being done, in fact, and invite their beneficiaries to return. 
Read more | We wait for an appointment up to two months: patients face delays in surgeries and consultations due to COVID

What are the options to reactivate specialty consultations, studies and surgeries? In the case of the IMSS, Célida Duque, director of Medical Benefits, explains the options: patients can go to their family medicine units and request directly there to reactivate their consultations. 
These units, in fact, were among those that did not close their services to other ailments during the COVID pandemic. Although regular consultations were suspended, patients could come to ask for their prescriptions or if they needed care. What was suspended in most hospitals were specialty consultations. 
For long months, the beneficiaries were met with the answer, when they asked about these, that they were suspended, because the hospitals were 100% COVID, and patients were not being channeled to other health centers, or they were hybrids but only the most urgent was attended to. 

Now, says Dr. Duque, they can no longer tell them that they are suspended, in all the hospitals they have already been reactivated and they are doing even medical days during the weekends to get up to date on the services. 
Then, the first thing is to go to the medical unit to reactivate your regular consultation here, for this you can also call 800-681-25-25 or enter the digital IMSS portal, where you have to go to the family consultation section and register the affiliation number, to receive the appointment. 
It is in these family medicine clinics that people can request that their specialty consultations be resumed. Medical staff have access to a platform to manage appointments at hospitals. 
“Of course we have many patients who must return to services, because they did not come for months and require the control of their chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension, but we are working until the weekends to meet the demand,” says Duque. 
Since April, the IMSS has been working out its strategy for the recovery of regular services, with medical days during the weekends, in which its staff works overtime to provide care to patients. 
“The consultations of specialties, studies and surgeries are done from Monday to Friday, but also on Saturday and Sunday,” says the director of Medical Benefits of the IMSS. In this recovery scheme, he says, working hours are being done according to the increased demand. “If we have pending assessments for traumatology and orthopedics, there is a day where a group of specialists gives care in an extraordinary way.” 
The call made by the board to the beneficiaries of the IMSS is that it is time to return to their consultations, their studies and surgeries. “We are with the facilities open, guaranteeing the protection measures. It’s time to return to follow-up and timely disease detection services.” 
In the case of the ISSSTE, although this portal also requested an interview to know the strategy to reactivate the services, the communication area only sent a card, with the answers of Dr. Addi Huerta Zarco, in charge of the Telephone Medical Appointment System and Internet of this institution. 
In relation to the procedure for requesting a medical appointment in the units of the first level of care that operate with the Telephone Appointment System and the Internet, says the card, there are three options: request it digitally, the second option is to do it by phone to the number 554000-1000 or you can go to ask for it at the medical unit , in the Clinical Archive window. 
Although, the ISSSTE card warns that the attention span depends on the demand of the users and the resolving capacity of each unit, depending on the medical personnel available.
On whether specialty consultations, studies and surgeries have already resumed in all hospitals, the answer only says that the second and third level units of the institution have resumed care in accordance with the Operational Guide for the Continuity of Health Services issued by the ISSSTE, in the that reconversion is established in accordance with the epidemiological traffic light. 
This guide details that each medical unit – according to the needs of its users – can open other services or expand the consultation for other specialties.
This portal also requested information from the Ministry of Health on the resumption of regular services in its hospitals and the strategy to do so, but until the close of the edition did not receive a response. 
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Original source in Spanish

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