Outpatient care is aimed at providing the patient with appropriate care in an ambulatory form on the basis of the severity and complications of their disease in order to prevent the development of serious conditions requiring hospital admission. Outpatient care also involves assessing the need for performing differential diagnostics, making appointments and scheduling such tests, as well as choosing the best (even if sometimes very high cost) therapy, and doing follow-up on the efficacy of the therapy.
Outpatients are attended to in a separate building at the Auguszta premises. In addition to the 30 hours care provided weekly in an ambulatory form, in 2018 a new specialist care was introduced for those suffering from inherited storage diseases (Dr. Éva Rákóczi). Due to the growing number of our patients, since 1 September 2021 our services have been available 62 hours a week. This means that our outpatients are attended to and treated in 3 specialist offices 6 hours a day between 8 AM and 2 PM. In addition to our catchment area, we also receive patients coming from the whole region or neighboring counties (sometimes even from remote parts of the country), and treat them or provide follow-up for the above specified diagnoses. Not only rheumatology and storage conditions, but post-Covid rheumatological signs and symptoms are also treated at one of our specialist consultations, which has been available since July 2021 for two hours a week. Next to our specialist offices patients can find the infusion room for outpatients, where they are administered targeted intravenous biological therapies, if needed. This room has a capacity of 8 comfortable reclining infusion chairs, where 20-25 patients can be treated a week. Our specialist consultations are provided by licensed rheumatologists, while in the biological therapy infusion room patients’ examination is initiated by a specialist candidate and the therapy is monitored by a specialist.
The number of outpatients and the related cases is increasing gradually (now we treat about 19,000 patients a year), and their number is expected to continue growing in the future. We currently treat approximately 2,500 patients suffering from inflammatory/autoimmune diseases, and more than 1,000 patients receive itemized targeted biological therapy; also, we provide about 150 patients with therapies beyond indication, which are supported on the basis of discretionary individual assessment. When choosing the appropriate therapy for pediatric rheumatology diseases, we work in close cooperation with the Pediatric Institution of the Nagyerdei Campus.