A new hospital in the west will be built in Quinta do Falcao in Bombarral in about five years, Health Minister Manuel Pizarro said on Tuesday.
“There is no doubt that the population of the West deserves a much more differentiated and larger hospital,” said Manuel Pizarro in Caldas da Rainha, where he announced the selection of Quinta do Falcao in Bombarral, Leiria District, as the best. place for a new hospital block.
This, the Minister of Health added, “is only possible by transforming the current hospital center with several departments scattered over several cities into a single building that has a certain centrality and allows this concentration. [de serviços] which will allow technical differentiation of the hospital.”
The decision, communicated on Tuesday to 12 municipalities in the west, “is not unanimous”, but it is his ministry that considers it ideal, given the location “in the geographical center of the region, with excellent road access, two minutes from 8 and less than four minutes from the railway station”, – explained the official.
At the end of the meeting with the mayors, held at the headquarters of the Comunidade Intermunicipal do Oeste (OesteCim) in Caldas da Rainha, the minister said that a funding model would be explored, acknowledging that he could “choose a private partnership system for the construction and further maintenance of the hospital ”, or, alternatively, “a system of financing based on the state budget”.
The minister’s forecast is that the study will be completed by October, after which a tender for the project will be announced under “the most cost-effective financing system.”
According to the official, the new hospital “will have about 480 beds (…) and virtually all medical specialties in addition to those already in place” in three Centro Hospitalar do Oeste (CHO) hospitals, among which, for example, “Emergency Psychiatry and laboratory of hemodynamics for urgent cardiological interventions”.
Manuel Pizarro also left guarantees “from now on to invest in the improvement of the conditions of the two units of Caldas da Rainha and Torres Vedras” and to set up a working group in cooperation with the municipalities to give the future use of this equipment.”
The official suggests these units have “proximity services, complementary diagnostics and therapies, physical medicine and rehabilitation,” as well as new responses in terms of continuing care.
Without giving a timeline for the completion of the new hospital, the minister calculated that construction could take “always two to three years” after work began, so “from a very optimistic point of view” it could become a reality in the coming years. five years,” he said.
In November 2022, OesteCim conducted a study commissioned by the Universidade Nova de Lisboa to help the government select a site, a document that listed Bombarral as the ideal site.
In March, the councils of Caldas da Rainha and Óbidos submitted a technical opinion to the minister challenging the criteria used in the study and defending mitigation measures if a hospital disappears in Caldas da Rainha, as well as the location of the new hospital. Hospital at the confluence of these two counties.
The new hospital will replace the current Centro Hospitalar do Oeste, which includes the hospitals Caldas da Rainha, Torres Vedras and Peniche, whose area of influence includes the municipalities of Caldas da Rainha, Obidos, Peniche, Bombarral, Torres Vedras. , Cadaval and Lourinha, as well as part of the municipalities of Alcobaça and Mafra.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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