Impact of COVID-19 on healthcare in Qatar: Initiation and operations of the Urgent Consultation Center (UCC) hotline, virtual transformation of healthcare services, and accelerated data sharing solutions—Challenges and opportunities

The rising disease prevalence early during the COVID-19 pandemic in the State of Qatar led to stoppage of all nonemergency healthcare services. To maintain continuity of care and information exchanges for nonemergency patients, a physician-operated telephone hotline was set up that involved triage followed by immediate consultation with a specialized physician. The Urgent Consultation Center (UCC) was implemented at Hamad Medical Corporation, the public health provider in Qatar. This chapter describes the initiation and operations of UCC as the first hotline manned exclusively by physicians. It depicts a range of issues in terms of patient privacy, the flow of work at UCC from receiving the call to solving the patient's problem, along with quality assurance processes and the documentation of calls. The chapter then moves on to highlight the steps taken to refine the UCC service emphasizing the challenges related to interpretation, document/photo sharing, bringing additional medical specialties and additional staff on board, and dealing with medical store requests. It then proceeds to narrate the contests encountered during issuing prescriptions, repeat prescriptions, referrals to outpatient department, emergency department/pediatric emergency center, and primary healthcare centers, as well as the delivery of medications to patients’ homes. As a virtual service, 150 physicians manned the UCC hotline aimed at urgent nonlife-threatening consultations and triaged inbound patient calls related to 15 medical and surgical specialties averaging about 394 calls/day. The chapter advances to conclude with the resources required, lessons learned, and the coordination spectrum needed to ensure a smooth transition and continuity of care during such or future similar epidemics.