FNAM condemns ‘errors, failures and delays’ in payments to family health teams

On Tuesday, the National Federation of Physicians condemned “glitches, errors and delays” in payments to family doctors and other members of family health groups and challenged changes made that would eliminate age-based weighting.

In a statement, the National Federation of Doctors (FNAM) says the generalization of the local health unit (ULS) model and the disappearance of regional health authorities (ARS) are “causing disruptions, errors and delays” in payments, and points to lack of compliance with the law on family health units (USF).

According to FNAM, the decision, communicated through the ACSS at the end of April, that only the number of users will be taken into account when processing salaries, without taking into account the age of the users, means that specialists in departments with an elderly population “may not receive the bonus (…) to which they are entitled.”

The Federation justifies that this change “not only contradicts the decisions of the previous Minister of Health at the negotiating table, but also threatens the generalization of the USF model, the quality and satisfaction of users and professionals, which were the prerogative of the Federation.” this model”.

Age-weighting allows one to calculate the workload that a given population will impose on their care provider, i.e. a population with more users at the extremes of age results in more consultations as it requires more careful monitoring and care.

FNAM believes that the change “is serious and will lead to inequity in the salaries of family doctors (…), which will have immediate consequences for the capacity of primary health care in Portugal.”

Remember that age-based weighting of user lists has been in place since the first USF began operating in 2006, established by decree-law, and must remain unchanged “until any new weighting has been ethically and scientifically validated.”

The federation also demands an “immediate correction” of the rules for assigning the supplement related to the increase in the list of users, namely the assignment of the supplement to family doctors “with lists of more than 1,917 weighted units.”

In a note published on Tuesday, FNAM believed that the abolition of quotas for the formation of the new Model B USF (pay-by-goal) at the national level in 2024 “was an important step to ensure better health care and family practice.” to all the people of Portugal.”

He also recalls that he always warned the previous government that the generalization of the USF Model B “must be done in order to guarantee the quality of care provided”, especially in relation to accessibility and satisfaction of users and professionals.