The government is announcing this Wednesday an emergency health plan, which the Prime Minister has committed to present in the first 60 days of his executive term and which will run until 2025 in response to what he considers an “alarming” state in the sector.
“As we promised, we will develop an emergency program that will be presented by June 2,” Luis Montenegro said at the inauguration ceremony.
According to the government program, the plan, prepared by a working group coordinated by Dr. Eurico Castro Alves, will focus on restoring waiting lists for consultations, operations and examinations, responding to maternal and child health issues, and primary health care.
On this occasion, the chief executive of the PSD/SDS-PP coalition also said that in parallel with this plan, “the government will not fail to carry out a structural reform that will strengthen and preserve” the National Health Service (NHS) as the basis of the system, but warned that the capacity laid down in the social and private sectors, must be used “without useless ideological complexes.”
Government Program XXIV acknowledges that the diagnosis of the current health situation in Portugal is “well established and documented by serious and authoritative sources” and is “generally considered alarming.”
“In some NHS hospitals, clinically recommended times for consultations and operations are often exceeded,” the document also said, highlighting that the “consistent deterioration of working conditions” for health workers has had “catastrophic consequences on the organization” of services, with “particular gravity” for emergency cases.
In this regard, the emergency plan in accordance with the Government program aims to guarantee maximum response time for specialist consultations, operations and additional diagnostics and therapies.
In addition, it aims to “guarantee an emergency response in the field of maternal and child health and strives to appoint a family doctor for all Portuguese, starting with the most vulnerable.”
According to the document, this is a plan that will be “submitted in 60 days, which includes a series of measures to achieve these goals in a specific calendar, step by step, in 2024-2025.”
The presentation of this plan comes at a time when there are changes in the SNS Executive Directorate (DE-SNS), the institution created by the previous government to manage the provision of assistance to users in the form of the network, with the departure of Fernando Araujo. , after approximately 15 months in office and the appointment of military doctor António Gandra d’Almeida to this position.
In addition to changes in the coordination group, it is expected that DE-SNS, the body provided for in the new SNS Charter, will be reformulated, providing a simpler structure.
The government program specifically calls for a “reformulation of DE-SNS with changes to its organic structure – more simplified – and its functional mandate, aimed less at contracting and financing models, infrastructure, human resources and digital transformation in healthcare.”
The emergency plan also comes after health unions and the government met to agree the terms of career talks, with doctors currently refusing to sign the negotiations protocol, claiming it does not include pay scales.
Trade unions have warned that improving pay and working conditions is essential to retaining and attracting more doctors to the SNS, a limitation also compounded by the high number of predictable physician retirements.
In an activity report submitted to the Ministry of Health, DE-SNS warns that about 5,000 SNS professionals are expected to retire this year, deeming it “critical to be able to attract” new specialists and doctors who work outside government agencies.
This year alone, executive management estimates that 1,901 physicians, 699 nurses, 1,158 operating assistants, 171 senior diagnostic and therapeutic technicians, 794 technical assistants, 139 senior technicians, 37 pharmacists and about 198 specialists from other fields may retire.
According to the Medical Association, 45% of approximately 9,000 family doctors are over 65 years of age, and according to the transparency portal SNS, 1,565,880 users did not qualify for a general and family medicine specialist, when there were approximately 644 thousand in August 2019.
Official data shows that at the end of March there were about 21,400 specialist doctors in the SNS, as well as another 11,000 interns, more than 50,000 nurses and 9,800 senior diagnostic and therapeutic technicians.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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