"DAYTIME HOSPITAL" MODEL IN BUDAPEST SPAS.

The model of "daytime hospital" of hungarian spas is becoming imposed in Spain.

The emblemátic Baths of Gellert, Szechenyi, Lukacs and Rudas, are including among its facilkities, a complex Physiotherapy Department ( daytime hospitals) aimed to the public service.

The "SPA during daytime", an option for those who need long duration treatments, is a proposal that is studied in Spain, following the hungarian balneotherapy tendencies. The aim is to provide better and more durable results using less medication and more natural methods

Due to the geologic composition of the Valley of the Cárpatos, Budapest is the place where we found the most of medicinal springs of Hungary. The natural springs with water temperatures ranging between 21 and 76ºC and the perforated wells (approximately 118) of Budapest, all together giving 30.000 cubic metres of thermal water every 24 hours.

SZECHENYI spa

Most of the waters of Budapest are classified as medicinal waters, and mineral water of healing effects, under official recognition. The composition of the mineral waters contains calcium-magnesium, hidrocarbonatos, although they are alkaline and lightly radio-active.

Among natural cure's methods, the Balneotherapy is applied, including MUDS treatments, hydropínica and inhalation cures. The massage of jets inside the water and traction bath are outstanding techniques in the treatments by hydrotherapy. Besides the therapy with machines -massage and healing gymnastics?that are programmed, great importance is granted to the electro-therapy.

The traditional baths also have experienced an important change, and at the present time, the treatments for thermal water are carried out combined with others psicotherapéutic techniques.

The abbreviated name of Budapest Spas and Thermal Waters Company Limited by Shares (Budapest Gyogyfurdoi is Hevizel Reszvenytarsasag) it is Budapest Spas Co. Ltd. (Budapest Gyogyfurdoi Rt.). It was established in Julio 1996 as legal successor of the company of public utility of the municipality (Fovarosi Furdoigazgatosag), organized later on.

The founder and only proprietor, the municipality of the city of Budapest, is responsible for 16 public baths, swimming pools, lidos and 10 medical baths in the capital and they have traditional therapeutic services that they offer to the users and visitors. The specialists provide advice like spa doctors. In accordance with the last legal regulation, they are qualified to prescribe different hydrotherapies and clients can appeal them to obtain rehabilitation, free, in the social security.

These treatments can also be prescribed by rheumatologists, psychotherapists and specialists in rehabilitation of osseous alterations and articulations.

In Spain, when somebody goes to an spa, usually is with the purpose of following a medical treatment, and the patients lodge in their hotel during one or two weeks.

This traditional form of using the facilities of a thermal establishment, this is the formula offered by the programs of social thermalism of the Goverment.

The option of the "spa during daytime" that consists in receiving the thermal treatments but returning the patient to their house each day, it is a possibility that would favor people with discapacities in chronic or sub acute phases, or with chronic illnesses that can create a discapacity, according to the Dr. Juan Alonso Escarrer, rehabilitative doctor of the Spa of Chulilla ( Valencian Autonomy).

In their opinion, the users of the "spa by day" they may enjoy all the programmed activities if, instead of only staying the time of the thermal cure, they remain the rest of the working-day, until the end of the day. And the spa ambient, is highly valuated because increase subjectively the power of the beneficial effects of the thermal techniques.

MEDICINE "VERSUS" PLACES OF HEALTH

The International Society of Medical Hydrology and Climatology and the Hungarian Association of Balneotherapy in collaboration with the Hungarian Society for the Rehabilitation and of the Discapacity, it promotes the concept of the Medicine of those "Places of Health "as an independent speciality for the prevention, treatment and medical rehabilitation of chronic illnesses.

Keeping in mind that the chronic sufferings increase among the elderly population, the I.SM.H. whose Chairman is the Professor Helmut Pratzel, it is promoting a global study of the places of health, as initiative to avoid the necessity of the expensive care of the elderly age, in the treatment of disorders or chronic ailments, preventive strategies and rehabilitation programs.

The prestigious professor of the University of Munich, in conversation with TERMASWORLD, express his opinion regarding the reasons of the general increment of the cost of the Sanitary Attendance and the meaning of what considers places of health."

In his opinion, the increase of costs in the diagnosis is due to the high value of the team of high technology but also to the increment in the costs due to a change in the number of ailments.

" Increments of costs -say - because the increase of people of the elderly population, since a hundred years ago, for each 75 elderly persons there were 79 youths, at the present only there are 12. Also due to an important influence of the free market and the industry in the medical systems of diagnosis and treatment, the high prices to pay for a medical insurance and, finally, the costs have been increased due to the private consultations carried out by doctors to compensate the low official salaries and to be able to maintain their economic level of life."

For the President of the International Society of Medical Hydrology and Climatology, the most economic procedure in the treatment is the prevention by means of a sanitary education and the stimulation through the teaching of physiologic functions to reactivate the power of the self-cure.

" This is the main achievement of the Places of Health", he remarks. Surgery methods or by means of the employment of medications, they are more expensive treatments. These methods are necessary only in the case of not existing alternative treatment."

He adds that the Medicine of the Places of Health is accepted by the patient better than the treatment with medications and that the Places of Health are integrated mainly in the Sanitary Attendance of treatments of prevention and rehabilitation programs for external and interned patients, in many countries."

All things considered, he affirms that the Medicine of Places of Health is the third option in the Sanitary Attendance under the system of external patient treated by the family doctor or patients interned in hospitals." For the Prof. Helmut Pratzel the excellent facilities and environments of the Places of Health and of the Spas should be used for the medical treatment of ailments and in the Tourism of Health, always with methods of prevention. This would stabilize the economy of the companies that manage these Places of Health"

TERMAS WORLD AGENCY