Montenegro wants to reformulate the Executive Directorate of the SNS and evaluate local health units

It must be remembered that the current Minister of Health, when she was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Centro Hospitalar Universitário Lisboa Norte, did not accept the leadership of the local health unit in Santa María because she did not agree to include university hospitals in this model.

Luis Montenegro's government wants to reconstitute the Executive Directorate of the SNS (DE-SNS) and evaluate local health units, particularly those that form part of university hospitals.

In the government's program document, presented on Wednesday, the executive announced that it intends to reformulate this body – led by Fernando Araujo and created in November 2022 and which entered into full functions on January 1 last year – with a “change in its organic composition”, Which makes it “simpler”.

It also aims to change the functional competencies of DE-SNS, “aiming for less vertical governance.” The goal, the document says, is for this body to take actions that are “more appropriate to the complexity of health responses, linking networks of care, contracting and financing models, infrastructure, human resources, and digital transformation in health,” it says. .

The government program also reveals the goal of “evaluating the performance of local health units (ULS)”, with plans to review their planning, “with a particular focus on those that form part of university hospitals”.

It must be remembered that the new Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, who at that time was President of the Board of Directors of the Centro Hospitalar Universitário Lisboa Norte, did not accept the presidency of the Local Health Unit of Santa María (ULS), after she showed herself critical of the inclusion of university hospitals in these models. New.

Regarding the reformulation, the government wants to “achieve resilient local health systems with the participation of public, private and social entities” and encourage “a sustainable increase of the Universal Service Fund Model B throughout the national territory,” with the Universal Service Fund opening Model C pilot projects.”