The chief executive of the National Health Service (SNS) will meet throughout the day on Saturday with hospital administrators who are facing difficulties filling ambulance rosters.
The information was released late today by several media outlets and confirmed to Luse by a source from the SNS executive management, who said that several meetings would be held during the day, but did not specify how many exactly were planned.
In recent weeks, some of the country’s hospitals have found it difficult to maintain full teams, particularly for emergency services, as several doctors refuse to work more than the 150 hours of overtime required by law each year.
A survey this week by the National Federation of Doctors (Fnam) on the issuance of overtime protocols highlighted that this situation is leading to the closure and restrictions not only of emergency services, but also of other hospital services.
According to FNAM, about 2,000 doctors have already refused to work more hours than required by law.
Also this week, a spokesman for the Doctors in Struggle movement told Lusa that the nation’s health care system was “collapsing” and that doctors could no longer stop the “collapse,” which was causing outages in 27 of the country’s hospitals.
Santa Maria Hospital – the country’s largest – today urged only patients who need urgent and urgent care to come to its emergency department, claiming the service is under great pressure as it receives patients from other hospitals.