Healthcare in the Blackhelm Confederacy

Churches

Most churches in the Blackhelm Confederacy also play home to a small family clinic for the treatment of routine illness and disease. The typical church in the country will have one priest who has been fully trained as a general practitioner, as well as a nun certified as a nurse practitioner to cater to the needs of their parish.

In addition to the smaller clinics, there are also a number of large hospitals throughout the nation run by members of the churches, staffed primarily by clergy and volunteers. some lay physicians also work their, their salary provided through church coffers.

Veterans

Polyclinics

Polyclinics are medical facilities primarily for outpatient care located in many neighbourhoods. Former and current veterans, as well as their family members can recieve treatment at a polyclininc for free, by a physician that is assigned to them. These facilities serve to treat simple problems, provide vaccinations, and do diagnostics. Some equipment like magnetic resonance and computed tomographic imaging devices, however, are almost nonexistant.

Many people report that they have little confidence in polyclinic physicians, and that they usually visited them to get a work excuse. Medicines are usually imported from outside the Confederacy, principally from Nikolia, but people are able to purchase alternatives at low prices from pharmacies, if they are able to find them.

Hospitals

Veteran's hospitals are organized in some sort of gradation by size and complexity with established population catchment areas so that the veteran and veteran family population base is known and exclusive. Hospitals are staffed on a salary basis by a range and quantity of specialists, according to professionally agreed-on norms. The primary function of these locations are to control contagious diseases, as well as preform tasks that might be out of the realm of the polyclinics, such as x-rays, CT scans, and other things of that nature, as well as some minor surgeries. Additionally, they serve as places for people to recover from illnesses such as influenza or gastroenteritis. For anything requiring more complex treatment, such as by-pass surgeries or chemotherapy, however, people will typically need to rely on either the church or on private enterprise.

Dispensaries

The Blackhelm Confederacy is also host to a number of specialized dispensary agencies for specific conditions, such as T.B., venereal and skin diseases, and mental disease; other diseases are being added. The dispensaries receive referrals from the polyclinics and/or the hospitals. The concept is one of long-term surveillance of patients with the particular diseases. Again, the dispensaries have their catchment areas according to some measure of a population base yielding certain types of patients.