This year, the Vodafone Romania Foundation financed the first emergency and paediatric advice call centre,a project implemented by the Parents of Romania, Parents of Cluj Foundation for the Cluj Napoca Emergency Children’s Hospital and parents from Cluj county.
Parents often panic when their baby displays the smallest sign of a cold. The main purpose of this project has been and still is to reduce the number of parents who refer to the paediatric emergency room without necessarily having a medical emergency. Thanks to the PEDITEL project, parents are spared unnecessary visits to the emergency room, and at the same time they get information on how to approach various health issues their children might have, at any time, day or night. At the beginning of July, there were a number of 31 on-call doctors for the PEDITEL service.
Preliminary results
Our colleagues at the Parents of Romania, Parents of Cluj Foundation have delivered the first preliminary statistics for the 1791 PEDITEL service, as well as first-hand information regarding the degree of satisfaction among parents who have referred to this service.
Between January and June 2014, 2757 paediatric cases were solved, and 65% of all requests were settled through phone recommendations, with no further need for parents to bring their little ones at the doctor’s office.
As for evaluating the level of satisfaction among parents, over 97% of them declared themselves very pleased with how their issues were handled. The evaluation was performed on a sample of 306 parents, representing 12% of those who used the service.
The PEDITEL initiative was a complete success, which is also supported by the 14,5% decrease in the number of ambulance service solicitations for patients aged 0 through 18, compared to the same period in 2012 and 2013.
The Vodafone Romania Foundation has financed this project through the Mobile for Good financing programme. The most ample one of its kind in Romania, Mobile for Good uses mobile technology to improve the lives of people faced with difficult situations.
