Now that we are up in the mountains, the temperature is a bit lower than in San Jose and Las Juntas. We spent a full day in Monteverde, which is a rural town in close proximity to a cloud forest. The morning was spent at a primary care clinic, where we had the opportunity to talk to health professionals and administrators about both the successes and the challenges of Costa Rica’s health care system in rural areas.
In Monteverde, there is a clinic where people can go to receive primary care as well as emergency care. Minor emergencies can be treated in this clinic; however, if specialty care or surgery is needed, the patient is transported to either a public regional hospital or a national hospital in San Jose. When we toured the facility, we learned that the emergency room here in Monteverde is never full because they usually only treat patients who do not need to stay the night.
The clinic tour included the emergency room, general consultation rooms, the laboratory, vaccine storage, pharmacy, dental rooms, psychology, and medical record storage. In the pharmacy, each medication has a specific number that indicates its classification/use, and when a patient is prescribed a drug, the information is all stored in an electronic system that can be accessed nationwide. In addition, while in the laboratory, we learned that Costa Rica uses standards developed in the UK, and samples are tested monthly for quality assurance purposes.
An interesting and memorable part of the tour was our visit to the telemedicine room. Every day, the clinic in Monteverde spends a minimum of one hour doing telemedicine. This means that the primary care physician and the patient meet with a specialist (in one of the regional or national hospitals) via video conference. This has been a major advancement for health care in the rural regions of Costa Rica. From Monteverde, the closest hospital is over one and a half hours away, and for those patients who live even farther, it can take hours to travel to a hospital. Therefore, the patients can meet with a specialist, virtually, at the clinic in Monteverde. In the event that the specialist decides that he wants to meet with the patient face-to-face, a referral is made for the patient to travel to a larger hospital.
In addition to ATAPs, who travel house-to-house, the Monteverde clinic also has a mobile EBAIS. The mobile unit consists of a doctor, nurse, pharmacist, and social worker. They travel to more remote places to deliver care, dispense medications, and help improve the health of families in rural Costa Rica.
That’s all for tonight! More student reflections were added to the “Reflection” tab. Stay tuned for more information. Tomorrow is our last full day in Costa Rica – time flies!
