The Health Emergency Plan (PES) is ready for discussion and approval in the next Cabinet. This was announced by commentator Luis Márquez Méndez in his Sunday night slot on SIC. But DN learns that the plan will be presented immediately after the Cabinet meeting by Prime Minister Luis Montenegro. The Democratic Alliance (AD) made this campaign promise as one of its key priorities: a plan that includes measures aimed at resolving some of the weakest points in the National Health Service (SNS).
Specifically, as Luis Márquez Méndez also mentioned, restoring waiting lists for consultations and surgeries, both in primary care and in hospitals; Solve the problem of shortage of family doctors for more than 1.5 million users; Lack of human resources in maternity wards, which led to the periodic closure of some of them, from the north to the south of the country; Lack of resources in emergency services; And get more and better mental health care. It is on these five points that PES is based, which could be announced on Wednesday or in the following days.
According to DN, the meeting of the Council of Ministers of Health was already scheduled to be held on Wednesday, May 29, but at the time of publishing this text it was not possible to confirm whether the meeting will continue, given that during the day the Minister of Health will visit. The visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to our country has been confirmed, his arrival is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon and then he has scheduled working meetings with President Marcelo and the Prime Minister, which could be extended and lead to “changes in the government’s agenda.” , they told DN.
However, if the meeting is not held on Wednesday, it will be held on Thursday or Friday. The presentation template for this plan will be the same that was used to announce the new airport and housing and youth programs. In other words, it is presented by the Prime Minister in general, and then in detail by the responsible ministers.
The initially planned timing for the release of PES was 60 days after the government took office, so the media reported that the end of the deadline would be June 2, but Luis Montenegro had warned 15 days earlier that PES would be announced within days.
For Luis Márquez Méndez, as he mentioned in his space at SIC, this The plan “will be a test of cotton” for the new minister and for the government as well. For those on the ground, it will also be a test, but there are different priorities as to what it should contain. DN spoke to the two doctors’ unions – which have already held two meetings with the Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, although they have not yet effectively started negotiations – which, on the one hand, defend a plan with budgetary scope to solve them and on the other hand, the problems of increasing doctors’ salaries It is a comprehensive plan for all care, but also focuses on support from the private and social sectors.
For the President of the National Federation of Physicians (Fnam), these PES “must obligatorily consider and value professionals, especially doctors, both in their basic wages and in their working conditions,” because if they “rely on the PES and in relation to measures that are considered as bandages, “Like providing more incentives for more work, let’s not go there and nothing changes, because that’s not what doctors want.”
In fact, taking into account the five points announced by Luis Márquez Méndez, the doctor considers that a mistake has already been made, because “in medicine we do not work in cubicles (waiting lists, emergencies, maternity wards or mental health), but in my world.” .
This structure did not deliver “the government’s proposals for PES, but rather a notebook of doctors’ demands. This is what we would like to see resolved first, otherwise doctors will continue to leave the NHS,” Joana Bordallo e Sa explains to DN.
Secretary General of the Syndicate of Independent Doctors (SIM), who told DN that, in addition to the order book for doctors, he presented a document containing solutions that he considered should be part of the PES, arguing that it “must have measures” which include primary care and hospitals, to solve the problem Access to care comes first, but also includes, as stated in the government programme, support from the private and social sectors.
Nuno Rodrigues even believes that these two sectors could complement the SNS and take over functions that currently fall to family doctors, in order to give them more time to carry out their tasks as SNS doctors, pointing in particular to “multi-purpose certificates, applications for fishermen’s licenses, “Coastal employer licenses, driver’s licenses, and eventually, medical plates and disability certificates.” “We have 1.5 million Portuguese who do not have a family doctor and it is important to ensure access to primary care,” the doctor recalls.
In this sense, SIM proposed to the government “to create a portfolio of contracts for additional services, first, with SNS doctors to carry out additional consultations to their list, with the same value proposed for the private and social sectors” and, in his opinion, this could lead to the discounting of consultations for users without a family doctor. He explained that this is “because having a family doctor for all users is like a utopia.”
At hospital level and to recover waiting lists for consultations, for example, SIM proposed using the same recovery system for surgeries, (SIGIC – Integrated Management System for Registered Surgery), also based on additional production, highlighting: “The same system, but finding a formula that is “In which balance is possible, such that there is no additional production more than scheduled.”
The preparation of PES was entrusted to a government-appointed team led by physician Eurico Castro Alves. Regarding PES, what is known so far is that it will integrate measures targeting emergency cases, maternity wards and waiting lists.
