Almost 2,000 family doctors are currently training in Portugal, the health minister said this Friday, recalling that many doctors will reach retirement age by the end of the year.
“By the end of 2024, we will still be faced with many doctors reaching retirement age, and despite the recruitment of doctors that we are doing, we are training many more family doctors than we trained before, today we have almost two thousand family doctors in country. training,” Manuel Pizarro told reporters after the transfer of health skills to the municipality of Oeiras was formalized.
A government official recalled that only at the end of the year will it be possible to achieve a “significant increase in the volume of aid.”
Referring to the latest competition among doctors who completed their specialty in the second season in 2023, the Minister of Health noted that out of 73 graduates, 62 were employed in the National Health Service (NHS).
“In addition to these 62, there were 40 more doctors who were outside the SNS and agreed to stay, that is, we recruited 102 [médicos]. This is a drop of water for our needs, but this is a fixation of everyone who was available,” he emphasized.
According to Manuel Pizarro, in the competition, which started in December 2023, “86% of the doctors for whom it was intended” were selected.
“This competition had the goal of recruiting 73 doctors who graduated from the specialty at the SNS. The rest is additional growth. Yes, we opened 900 vacancies because this decision of mine helped a lot. The solution is to open all available places,” he said.
According to a list published last week in the newspaper Diário da República, the government has opened 924 vacancies for family doctors, leaving only 143 candidates registered in the competition announced in December.
“We already did this in May [de 2023]. At that time, we had recruited 91% of physicians who had completed the specialty. We repeat now. We recruited 86% of doctors [recém-formados]. These are the highest physician retention rates in years,” he said, adding that the government knows “there are no doctors to fill these vacancies.”
According to the same competition, 29 vacancies were opened in the specialty “Public Health”, 12 young doctors were accepted for them.
The number of users without a designated family doctor grew by 9.8% during 2023, rising from 1,570,018 in January to 1,724,859 in December, transparency portal SNS indicates.
According to data from the Lusa agency, from January 2016 to December last year, the month that recorded the lowest number of users without a family doctor was September 2019 (641,228), while the highest number was reached in May 2023 (1,757,747).
Between the low of September 2019 and the high of May 2023, the number of users without a designated professional increased by 174%.
On the other hand, the number of users registered in primary health care rose from 10,574,055 in January 2023 to 10,570,863 in December, a registered decrease of 3,192.
Between June 2020 and June 2023, subscriber growth was constant, from 10,267,818 to 10,622,877 respectively, representing a 3.4% increase in users.
The transparency portal also indicates that, by the user’s own choice, 22,069 people did not have a family doctor in December 2023, which is 27.8% less than in January of the same year (30,585) and 10.7% of the total did not have family doctor .
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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