BlueMoon Solutions
"for all your home and business computer needs" Booking A Spanish Medical Appointment Online
Booking A Spanish Medical Appointment Online
Do you ever have to queue for ages to get an appointment with the doctor? Well, I have the answer!
I don’t know about you but every time Liesl (‘er indoors) or I have need to go to the doctor the biggest frustration is the fact that we know that we will need to traipse to the medical centre and queue for up to an hour – and that is just to get the appointment to see the doctor!
Like many of the ex-pats here, I am quick to point out to others that the Spanish health system is far superior to that of good old Blighty, but also like most of my country folk, I have just “heard” that and don’t actually know whether it’s true. So this month I decided, (being far from an expert in this topic) that I would look it up. The best data that I could find was from that great online encyclopaedia – Wikipedia
Countries’ health services are ranked based on life expectancy, responsiveness (i.e. speed of service) and financial contribution. I’m guessing that my little area of the Costa Blanca didn’t help in the responsiveness factor!
Anyway, overall Spain was ranked number 7 in the world, with the UK coming 18th so it seems, in this case at least, the “jungle drums” were right; it still doesn’t change the fact, that, at least for my family, it’s a right royal pain the rear to get a simple appointment!
You can imagine my joy when I visited a customer, Graham in Gran Alacant, last week and he told me about a website he had found – www.san.gva.es If you have a SIP then you can use this website to book appointments with your local GP. This is all done over the Internet from the comfort of your own home so there is no need to stand for hours in dark, depressing, illness ridden reception halls in the local health centre!
I thought that I would share my wonderful discovery with you guys. It’s a pretty big website and does so much more than allow you to book appointments, but today this is the area we are going to focus on.
So first, you will need your computer, an Internet connection and your SIP card. Fire up your computer and get onto the Internet, once there navigate to www.san.gva.es, you will be shown a page with 3 options (Ciutadania, Professionals, Institucional), you need to click on the Ciutadania after which you will be shown a very busy website the same as (image 1)
As you will see there are only two languages for this site (Valencian or Castilliano), so no English I’m afraid. Next you need to click on the second menu item down on the left hand side, titled “Sanitat24: Solicitud de Cita Previa en atención primaria” this will display some hidden options, one of which is “Cita por Internet”, this is the option you need, once you click it you may get a message from your web browser saying that the “content is blocked”, just click to accept that you want to view the blocked content and you will see the same as (image 2).
You are almost there now, just enter your SIP card number in the box under “Número SIP / Número SIP” and your date of birth under the box “Data de naixement / Fecha de nacimiento”. Once done click on the button “Validar” to continue.
The website will then confirm the information that the health service have on record, i.e. your name etc. and it will then list any doctors that you are registered to. Just choose the doctor that you want to see and click on the Seleccionar button to continue.
The next page (image 3) displays information about your particular health service (your doctor’s name etc) and allows you to type your requested appointment information. In here just type the date that you would like your appointment on, using the format DD/MM/YYYY. Then enter the time range that you would like to see the available appointments for, so if you want to see what appointments are available from 10am to 11am enter 10:00 in the first box and 11:00 in the second for example, then click on the “Demanar cita” button to view the available slots.
The final screen (image 4) displays the appointments that are available to you, just select the specific appointment time and click “Confirmar cita” to confirm the appointment. If none of the appointments suit and you would like to check another time or date just click on the “Modificar criteris” to go back to the previous page and enter different information.
Once confirmed a page will be displayed that you can print to take with you to your appointment.
