Is there a solution to medical chaos and endless waiting before being taken care of? A health economy specialist responds to Euronews.
Closed emergencies, a shortage of health professionals, waiting times much superior to what is acceptable and a new, defaulting emergency sorting system. The Portuguese national health service is on the verge of collapse.
For Pedro Pita Barrosspecialist in health economics, problem lies in organizational and management capacity.
“To a certain extent, it is also a question of management, but also of competition with the private sector. The latter is much more able to function properly in terms of recruitment, to pay more attention to patients. So we have Here two major tension points: pure and hard management and the question of human resources.explains the economics professor in Nova Sbe in Euronews.
In May 2024, the government presented a Sanitary and transformation urgency plan To be implemented in 3 months to guarantee the population access to care.
Without much progress in sight and with certain emergency units exceeding 30 hours of waiting, the Prime Minister said last week during a bi -annual debate in Parliament that the executive was still not satisfied with the results.
Pedro Pita Barros hopes that the plan will stop being an emergency and will become a continuous improvement programwhich will also undergo adjustments.
“We must abandon the idea that we will be able to solve the problems of the National Health Service in a month or two (…) The question is how we can constantly adapt it to the needs that arise”underlines the economist.
Patients complain in particular of the compulsory preselection by phone (Saúde 24), which delays the medical interventions all the more than in hospitals, they are always subject at long waiting times.
“”Last week, with one of my relatives who was sent to the emergency room by Saúde 24, We waited almost 12 hours. And from what I have seen, I don’t think it’s too serious. There were cases of patients who had been there since the previous night. I went around around 1 p.m. and left at midnight and a half“Said a SNS patient in Euronews.
THE Movement of public services users (Musp) has already declared in a statement that the Ministry of Health knows that “Long queues are the result of a lack of professionalsand conditions to remember and attract them to SNS“.
According to Musp, to a serious problem that required serious and deep measures, namely More investments in the SNS and its professionals, the “Government responds with a bureaucratic measure, by initiating a health appeal center, by creating one more barrier and delaying the medical procedure”.
Between 2020 and 2024, the level of satisfaction with regard to public health care in Europe dropped from 74 % to 56 %, according to a report (English link) of the German pharmaceutical company Stada. Only 49 % of Portuguese say they are satisfied with the quality of SNS services.
In theEuro Health Consumer indexPortugal ranks 13th in 35 European countries. Switzerland is at the top of the ranking, followed by the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark.
The Portuguese Minister of Health has already admitted that he was “”unacceptable” To have waiting times of several tens of hours in the emergency services and promised to take measures quickly.
Euronews questioned the Minister’s office, Ana Paula Martin, on the additional measures envisaged but has not, for the time being, received an answer.
