Government to conduct audit to assess hospitals’ ability to attract and retain specialists

The government is planning an audit to assess the ability of hospitals to attract and retain health workers, the health minister said on Wednesday.

“Our intention is to undertake an audit programme in 2024 and 2025 to assess current HR practices and best practice in the NHS, which is the ULS. [Unidades Locais de Saúde] “This could attract and retain more professionals,” Ana Paula Martins said during a hearing of the parliamentary health committee.

According to a government official, there are local health departments that are “re-engaging doctors in their teams,” but Ana Paula Martins acknowledged that hospital management has not been given the tools to develop two areas that she says are fundamental: Autonomy and results.

At the next hearing in parliament, which lasted more than four hours, the minister was questioned by Left Bloc MP Marisa Matias about the “disconnections” in the lists of users of family medical institutions.

The minister acknowledged that “there is still work to be done on the lists to improve them” but said there had been no reports of GPs or family members of users being removed from the lists.

“Doctors often tell us that they could have even more patients and more priorities. [mas] They do not have the right to take such patients on their own, and this is very important. Now there are power outages, we have not had any messages,” he commented.

Ana Paula Martins added that there is a discussion about the need to review the lists with doctors and adapt them to needs and “to the performance index itself, which, in fact, could even be on the negotiating table in the near future, to be improved in access issues and other indicators.”

Liberal Initiative MP Mário Amorim Lopes raised the issue of “health tourism”, saying it was the search for “free health care” in Portugal by foreign citizens, including those from “very rich countries”.

“Some countries even have ‘websites’ with instructions on how to come to Portugal to get free health care and then leave. This is absolutely unacceptable because it is the Portuguese who finance health care in other countries, some of which they come from, countries that are much richer than us,” the MP criticized.

Mario Lopez Amorim stressed that the amount is estimated at “in the order of hundreds of millions of euros”, which “is not billed to the countries of origin”.

In response, the minister said that she did not have figures on this reality, but told the deputy: “Everything you mentioned is exactly like that.”

“The boards of directors of various hospitals tell us this. We know the reality, but we don’t know the details, and in order to intervene, we need figures,” he defended himself.

According to the official, the Central Authority for the Health System (ACSS) has a “follow-up line only for foreign patients who, thanks to special health tourism, end up accessing treatments, some of which are quite expensive in Portugal.”