Firefighters demand action to address ambulance shortage due to problems in emergency departments

This Thursday, the Portuguese League of Firefighters demanded additional measures to address the shortage of ambulances due to restrictions in emergency hospitals, accusing the Emergency Patient Care Center of delaying decisions regarding the referral of patients.

In a conversation with Lusa, the president of the League of Portuguese Firefighters (LBP) considered it unacceptable that situations exist in which “patients have to wait 30–35 minutes in an ambulance to receive a CODU.” [Centro de Orientação de Doentes Urgentes] tell them which hospital they should go to.

“We have already brought this to the attention of the President of the National Institute of Emergency Medicine (INEM) and CODU must work differently. CODU should operate in crisis mode, not in natural mode,” said Antonio Nunez, accusing the center of “finding time to answer calls and make decisions.”

The person in charge noted that in meetings he had with fire commanders, it was reported that “the victim spent approximately 30 minutes in the ambulance waiting to see which hospital” he should go to.

As an example, he mentioned that recently a patient who was 10 minutes away from the hospital in Santarem had to wait 35 minutes for CODU to decide which medical unit to use, and ended up being transferred to Caldas da Rainha, for much more distance. . The League’s president stated that “the closure of acute care hospitals has serious implications for fire department response missions,” which “cannot continue to face daily signs of patients and casualties moving tens of kilometers away from the base hospital.” “.

In this sense, he argued that “urgent measures must be taken to ensure that there is no shortage of ambulances in fire departments.” LBP leaders had already warned the Minister of Health and the INEM President about the possibility of a shortage of ambulances in fire brigades due to the time it would take to call for help given current restrictions in hospital emergency departments, but they did not do so. haven’t received any response yet. .

António Nuñez stressed that LBP has already submitted some proposals to the government and INEM, namely a temporary contract until the end of the year for 90 additional ambulances that will be deployed to corporations in more problematic situations. According to LBP, ambulances will be contracted through INEM and mobilized to serve CODU.

“We are very concerned that something could go wrong and the fire department would not be held accountable,” he said, referring to the death of a patient in an ambulance.

António Núñez also expressed regret that there are no additional emergency measures to resolve the situation, which has recently been worsening due to emergency restrictions affecting more hospitals. According to the person in charge, initially the situation was very centralized in Santarem, the Western and Middle Tagus region, Setúbal and Loures, but now “more and more fire departments are experiencing these difficulties and seeing disruptions to normal functioning.”

“Firefighters are faced with very difficult situations because the distances are longer, patients are sent unusual distances, and in some cases there are longer delays in triage,” he explained.

LBP also reported that in 2021, the year of the Covid-19 pandemic, firefighters performed approximately 900,000 services, and this year and to date they have completed approximately 1.2 million services.

More than 30 hospitals from the north to the south of the country are facing difficulties and temporary closure of services due to the difficulties of the administration in filling the lists of doctors.