***Carlos van Buren Hospital hosted the event that brings together professionals in the field, both from clinics and hospitals in the SSVSA network, on a monthly basis.
The death certification process in Valparaíso was addressed by health professionals in order to improve epidemiological data in the region, in the context of the networking of the Valparaíso San Antonio Health Service. The meeting was attended by delegates from each health service establishment, including clinics (CESFAM) and hospitals, with the purpose of unifying criteria regarding epidemiological surveillance and information management.
The chief physician of the HCVB Epidemiology Unit and delegate of Epidemiology of the Valparaíso San Antonio Health Service, Dr. Yuri Carvajal, explained that they are working on a plan that addresses three main issues: the death certificate, diseases requiring mandatory notification, and epidemiological outbreaks.
The specialist said that “On this occasion, we focused on the issue of the death certificate, which is very complex because its regulations date back to 1970, so it is from another country, from another health system, and we have to try to adapt it. There is the issue of data quality because the death certificate should reflect a reflection by the treating physician on what happened to that patient and how he or she reached that outcome.”
The challenge lies in ensuring that the death certificate is a true reflection of the patient’s condition and the circumstances leading to his or her death. In addition, the aim is to speed up access to data for immediate use, avoiding delays that affect public health decision-making.
Work table
Dr. Heike Obermöller, Deputy Director of Healthcare Management at the Valparaíso San Antonio Health Service, highlighted the need to establish a working group that brings together all the actors involved in the death certification process.
The board commented that “The idea is to be able to create a working group with all the actors in the network, where the current regulations, the different protocols of the establishments and the guidelines of each one of them are reviewed, in order to agree on a general guideline for our Valparaíso San Antonio health service.”
The doctor also stressed that they also discussed the monitoring of epidemiological outbreaks and the importance of collecting and managing data that is useful for both predicting and diagnosing diseases in the population.
Accurate statistics
For her part, Dr. Elizabeth Godoy, a physician at the Valparaíso Municipal Corporation, stressed the importance of establishing a standardized protocol that allows for the collection of relevant information and the generation of accurate statistics that contribute to epidemiological analysis at the national level.
The professional pointed out that “During the conversation, doubts arose about how to issue these certificates, how to gather this information regarding the death and also, how to carry out all the processes that are carried out within the different situations. For example, we were talking about infant mortality, which is not, at this time, specifically addressed in this protocol, it is perhaps more adult-centric.”
