BE defends exclusivity and hiring of four thousand doctors and nurses for SNS

A BE co-ordinator on Tuesday defended an exceptionalism regime for health workers with a 40% pay rise and the hiring of four thousand doctors and nurses to address a “structural problem” in the NHS.

Speaking to journalists at the Abrantes Hospital (Santarem), following a working meeting with the administration of the local health unit (ULS) Medio Tejo, Mariana Mortagua said that the problems identified there extend to the entire country, drawing attention to “two proposals” from BE, “quantitative ”, which are aimed at helping to solve the shortage of human resources by increasing professional attractiveness.

“Exclusivity, with a 40% increase in remuneration, and BE estimates that the bills for this measure will amount to 501 million euros (ME) per year,” he indicated, adding that “the hiring of two thousand doctors and two thousand nurses in the SNS” , a measure that he said was possible “with an exclusivity regime that attracts these professionals” and which he valued at 166 million euros.

According to Mariana Mortagua, “this exclusivity and the award of contracts, involving a large investment of more than 600 ME, will allow the state to save 100 ME on workers (…) and will also allow the state to save 300 ME in overtime, a net investment by the state of 255 million megatons in a complex of two measures.

“These are concrete bets that BE makes, proposals that allow solutions for social networks to be found, not only implemented in accordance with its time and its rules, but also quantified,” emphasized Mortagua, emphasizing that this is how the party is conducting this campaign : “We are the solutions, we do the math, and we want the majority to support those solutions.”

In the case of ULS Médio Tejo, where “almost half of the doctors are full-time because there are not enough doctors on staff,” which “justifies the difficulty in keeping emergency departments open,” the BE coordinator also said that she noted “the efforts and commitment of the professionals to keep the emergency departments open.” social networks” and that they “suffer from the consequences of a lack of investment and solutions, namely the ability to retain professionals.”

Asked about news released Tuesday by the health minister that pilot projects of emergency teams would begin in five health facilities in February, Mariana Mortagua rejected that the idea was a solution to SNS’s problems.

“This news is from Tuesday and we always talk about corrections. We are talking about pilot projects in Lisbon, Porto and Coimbra, they are not intended for the whole country, but only for three or four emergencies, which will further centralize the response that should be decentralized,” he said.

The government published a regulation in the Official Gazette on Tuesday establishing new rules and incentives that will apply to responsibility centers integrated with emergency service teams (CRI-SU).

In the first phase, five pilot projects will be implemented in local health units (ULS) of Santa Maria, São José in Lisbon, Coimbra, and São João and Santo António in Porto, which are “the five most differentiated emergencies.” in the National Health Service (SNS), Secretary of State Ricardo Mestre told Lusa.

Professionals can double their salary if they meet targets that allow them to receive appropriate raises and performance incentives.

According to the BE coordinator, the announced measures “do not solve the problem of access to medical care, do not solve the problem of the shortage of specialists, and they also have another problem: they make salary increases and incentives for doctors dependent on health.” health care systems, performance assessments that do not depend on objective criteria, they depend on emergency department attendance,” the measures he indicated were also “rejected” by professionals.

The human resource shortage, he insisted, “can be solved solely through careers and recruitment.