In a telephone interview with Lusa news agency, one day after the executive director of the National Health Service (DE-SNS) announced that the winter plan is ready and “about to be released,” Xavier Barreto warned: “This advance planning is good, but we shouldn’t create the idea that we won’t have problems.”
The president of APAH applauded the announcements made by Gandra D’Almeida in an interview with Expresso about the reorganization of emergency services and the winter plan, among other measures, but urged caution.
“I wouldn’t like us to get ahead of ourselves thinking that having the winter plan released three or four months in advance guarantees a problem-free winter. That’s not true, I’m sorry to say. Our resources will continue to be lacking next winter and perhaps next summer,” he said.
For Xavier Barreto, “unless structural changes with impact are made, such as reforming the emergency network, closing some emergency departments, or changing the standard teams, the problem won’t be solved.”
The APAH president considered that “while meeting quality requirements, it’s possible to reduce teams,” but warned about the difficulty in predicting what will happen in winter.
“The DE-SNS rightly asked hospitals last night [Wednesday] to inform them about the schedules they have planned for winter. But it’s not possible to make predictions four months in advance. There are professionals who don’t know if they’ll be sick or on leave four months from now,” he exemplified.
The official also reminded that a significant part of hospital schedules is guaranteed by service providers, professionals without a permanent contract who cannot be held disciplinarily responsible if they fail to show up.
“In some hospitals, more than half of the shifts are guaranteed by service providers (…) If they don’t show up, there are no legal consequences. We can choose not to hire them again, but we can’t take disciplinary action. There are many uncertainty factors,” he said.
Noting that the health situation “is not the fault of the DE-SNS,” but “rather the health policies of various governments over several years,” Xavier Barreto summarized: “We will continue to have problems, and we’ll be here to solve them.”
