Health cooperatives respond to the coronavirus crisis

In terms of employment, cooperative enterprises that make up the Espriu Foundation have facilitated working from home to protect health and guarantee the safety of employees, thereby helping to contain the spread of coronavirus, while at the healthcare level additional medical and nursing staff have been taken on in order to meet the increase in demand.

Hospitals have adapted to these exceptional circumstances by restructuring their facilities, increasing the capacity in place, creating new Intensive Care Units, with a twofold increase in some cases, and reassigning professionals, all with the aim of prioritising patients affected by covid-19.

All these initiatives have been developed in accordance with the guidelines issued by the health authorities, while also cooperating fully with the public health system.

Assistència Sanitaria, the insurance company of the doctors' cooperative Autogestió Sanitària, has established a specific free telephone advice service open to the whole population, with a team of the organisation's healthcare professionals providing guidance and clarifying queries about coronavirus. It has also strengthened its communication strategy and is developing a partnership project to maintain medical practices that have been affected.

Through the Asisa group the Lavinia cooperative has reinforced all its user response channels, both by telephone and digitally, while also launching Asisa LIVE, a new telemedicine service allowing medical appointments to be maintained remotely via mobile devices or computers in around twenty specialist fields, already handling over 2,500 appointments every week. The cooperative has likewise devised the AhoraMasQueNuncaTranquilidad.es portal, with a message of "keep calm, now more than ever", with helpful content concerning exercise, nutrition, mental health, sleep and working from home, backed up by Asisa Group professionals.

The HLA hospital network which is also owned by the cooperative has treated more than 6,000 patients for covid-19, with 1,500 of them having been admitted and over 170 requiring ICU treatment.

The Scias cooperative's Hospital de Barcelona, which is the Assistència Sanitària flagship, has reorganised all its activities, maintaining urgent and oncological surgery while suspending all other scheduled procedures so as to focus all its capacity on treating the population affected by the pandemic.

Both Assistència Sanitària and Asisa have joined forces with other insurers to protect the healthcare personnel combating coronavirus, by contributing to the solidarity fund set up by the insurance sector to cover all those who are caring the health of the citizens.