Doctors in private practice and the social sector will be able to issue certificates of temporary incapacity for work, the Minister of Health announced on Thursday, presenting a package of measures that also provides for simplification of medical commissions.
To “make life easier for citizens”, as well as “reduce bureaucracy in the National Health Service” and “hold everyone involved accountable”, medical certificates will be able to be “issued by emergency services” as well as by doctors from “private clinics or the social sector,” Minister Manuel said Pizarro this Thursday at the end of the meeting of the Council of Ministers.
Until now, to obtain a certificate of temporary incapacity for work, patients always had to contact their family doctor.
However, the Council of Ministers approved this Thursday a resolution to simplify this procedure. Now, for example, someone who goes to emergency services no longer needs to see their family doctor, as emergency services now have permission to issue a certificate, the minister said.
The measure also includes “medical practice, whether in the private sector or in the social sector, which makes each doctor responsible for issuing a certificate of temporary disability,” he added.
The minister said he was “well aware” that the change could “create risks of improper issuance of certificates” and therefore assured that “appropriate verification mechanisms will be put in place to prevent this problem.”
The purpose of this measure is also to reduce the time spent by family doctors processing these certificates: “This is time that they do not devote to caring for other patients,” the minister emphasized. Also recognizing the “difficulties of ensuring timely responses from medical commissions,” the government approved another diploma that will simplify the procedures for issuing certificates.
The innovation concerns cancer patients, since oncologists can issue a certificate of temporary disability for a period of five years, which can be extended upon request within the time limits established by law, while the certificate is considered “valid until the end of treatment of the joints.”
The Minister of Health emphasized that “the difficulties we encounter in medical commissions cannot and cannot be blamed on citizens.”
At the meeting this Thursday, another diploma of the healthcare era was also approved, which consolidates the creation of a career for medical professionals: “It recognizes 24 thousand assistants who, in the SNS, hospitals and medical centers, carry out various support activities for other specialists,” he emphasized.
According to Manuel Pizarro, this diploma “pays tribute to these 24 thousand specialists who take an absolutely necessary part in the process of monitoring and caring for patients.”
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Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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