The Prime Minister said this Friday that the full commitment regime and the expansion of Model B family health facilities will increase the pay of doctors, highlighting the strengthening of the health budget.
“We have two priorities in the government program, one of which is to regulate the regime of full dedication, which will simultaneously improve the conditions for paying doctors, as well as improve the access of the Portuguese to medical care,” said António Costa.
The second priority, the head of government continued, is “generalization of family health units.” [USF]Model B” which “will also have a very significant impact on doctors’ salaries” by about 60%.
“We are implementing these two reforms – one is related to the full commitment regime, the other is related to the generalization of the USF Model B – so that we can simultaneously pay professionals better, but also have better medical care. is given to the Portuguese because it is really a function of a social network and the purpose of a government program,” he stressed.
The Prime Minister was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a visit to the Teatro D.Maria II plant in Lisbon, when asked about the lack of agreement between the government and doctors’ unions on a revised salary scale. .
The negotiations, which were supposed to end in June, were marked by several strikes.
“All salary negotiations with doctors are based on these two reforms and the impact that this necessarily has on improving health care,” he said.
Costa also emphasized that since 2015, “the budget of the National Health Service [SNS] has already been strengthened by 56%, that is, from the set of taxes that the Portuguese pay, 56% more has been invested in SNS than it was before”, and there are currently “another 30,000 professionals”.
“This means that the Portuguese are making a very big effort to improve medical care in the SNA,” he stressed, pointing out that these investments “allow today, with all the existing difficulties, to have more consultations, more surgical interventions than before.”
The Prime Minister stated that “this progress has been important”, but noted that to continue it is not enough to “simply put more money into the SNS every year”, management needs to be improved, and for this the Executive Board was created by the SNS.