ABSTRACT
In Germany, most COVID-19 patients turn to their family physician (FP) as their first and often only point of contact. They can usually be treated on an outpatient basis, with some of them deteriorating critically within a short time frame and requiring emergency inpatient admission. Hence, the primary care sec-tor is crucial for the identification and primary management of COVID-19. However, many FP practices reach their limits in providing health care for COVID-19 patients. Additional measures of support offer a way to minimize the risk of infec-tion while still being able to provide adequate health care. Against this background, the CovidCare module for COVID-19 patients (CovidCare) was added to a frame software (Care-Cockpit) hosting already the established FP practice-based case management (PraCMan) for the treatment of multimor-bid patients, where VERAHs play a crucial role. Following the structure of case management, the focus of CovidCare is on structured telephone assessment of risks and symptoms en-abling the FP to determine the onset of illness and to tailor a standardized monitoring set to the individual patient needs, whereas telephone monitoring can be largely delegated to the VERAH. CovidCare aims to reduce uncertainties in health care providers and patients, to aid in timely identification of a se-vere course of COVID-19 and to reduce the workload of FPs. The module is accompanied by the CovidCare study including a process evaluation. Through CovidCare, primary care practice teams have the opportunity to provide a structured and in-dividually tailored telephone monitoring for disease surveillance over a short period of time of 7–21 days following the principle of delegation.