What is the best healthcare in 2022? The usual tendency is not to see the good and to see better all the bad! It seems more important to see worse! What if we see the good that happened and that it contributes to resolving the bad that happened?
There was one certainty every year: it always gets better! better?!! Yes it is better than the next year!
What went better in 2022?
It seems to me that the Statute of the National Health Service, approved by Decree-Law No. 52/2022, of August 4, is a good, essential and timely contribution. We hope it will help resolve the structural problems affecting us in SNS regulation and can allow solutions to the limitations of the provision of person-centered health care. Can help and can allow…!! This means that we still have to do everything possible so that a whole new strategy begins to find direction and a new organizational culture adapts to the current reality and the real needs of the communities we have. Will we be able to find this new trend in 2023 and beyond? Is there still time to give new impetus to SNS?
Law No. 95/2019 of September 4 ratified a new Basic Health Law and repealed Law No. 48/90 of August 24, the basic law in force for nearly 30 years! The new basic law “He took on the purpose of clarifying the role and relationship between the various actors in the health system, and reaffirming the centrality of the system of social communication, guided by the principles of universality, generality, which tends to be free and has its own platform.” This new statute also identified the need to build a new platform for the social networking system.
With the approval of this new Statutes of SNS (Decree-Law No. 52/2022 of August 4) Decree-Law No. 11/93 of January 15, which approved the SNS Statute, was repealed. Since the publication of the SNS platform in 1993, after nearly 30 years, many transformations have occurred in SNS, but much has changed in society in all its dimensions. From demography to digital, from technology to artificial intelligence, from culture to national and international politics, everything has changed. Even doctors are often others!
The new Basic Health Act of 2019 lacks regulation and enforcement, and the new SNS allows for and drives a range of transformations and innovations. I want to believe that these transformations will allow the SNS to be reformulated without distorting the human values and ethical principles that Antonio Arno, its main creator, defended in 1979.
One of the greatest novelties in the new statutes of the SNS is the creation of an Executive Council of the SNS (DE-SNS), a fresh and new structure for the year 2022. Decree-Law No. backgrounds in the structure, organization and functioning of the SNS and approves membership for the DE-SNS.
DE-SNS is the big news for 2022. I admit it is the great hope to renew, increase and strengthen SNS for “Coordinating the care response of health units in the SNS, ensuring its functioning in a network, continuous improvement of healthcare access, user participation and harmonization of clinical and health management.” This is the noble mission of this Executive Council. With the recognized competence of the first person in charge – Professor Fernando Araujo – and with the collaboration of the team that formed him, it makes us admit that SNS can still be saved. Thus we can admit that it was the best thing that happened in 2022! It’s just hope so far, but we don’t have anything else we can fall back on with enthusiasm!
Primary health care (PHC) – the first, the leaders and the most important – has been forgotten by policymakers for years now. After the CSP reform began in 2005 and has been implemented for about five years, divestment has gradually emerged. Despite the implementation of family health units that appear in the TROIKA’s list of recommendations as a measure to be developed, investment and political interest have declined year by year. Perhaps now it is appropriate to think again about CSP, to invest in SNS pillars and to develop health centers with operational functional units, without bureaucracy and technical and organizational autonomy.
Re-establish the National Health Service. Invest realistically. Defending and promoting the medical profession. Generous medical act.
Build without discrediting, enhance without offending, create without destroying.
Maybe we can still go back in time and contradict the reality we know about SNS: It’s always better compared to next year.
Access more exclusive content from our magazine here.
“Writer. Analyst. Avid travel maven. Devoted twitter guru. Unapologetic pop culture expert. General zombie enthusiast.”
