Portuguese national health service troubles continue

Closed A&E departments, a shortage of health professionals, waiting times far above of what is acceptable and a faulty new triage system. Portugal’s national health service is on the verge of collapse.

For Pedro Pita Barros, a specialist in health economics, the problem lies in the ability to organise and manage.

“To a certain extent it’s management too, but to a certain extent it’s competition with the private sector. It’s much more capable of working well in terms of recruitment and retention, of paying more attention to people. So we have two big tension points here, pure and hard management and a human resources issue. These will perhaps be the biggest challenges over the next three years,” the professor of economics at Nova School of Business and Economics explains to Euronews.

In May 2024, the government presented a Health Emergency and Transformation Plan to be implemented in 3 months to guarantee general access to healthcare.

Without much immediate progress in sight and with some hospital A&E units exceeding 30-hour waiting times, the Prime Minister said last week in a fortnightly debate in Parliament that the executive is still not satisfied with the results.

Pedro Pita Barros is hopeful that the plan will now stop being an emergency and become a programme of continuous improvement, which will also undergo adjustments itself.

“We have to get away from the idea that we’re going to be able to solve the problems of the National Health Service in a month or two. The problem isn’t making rules or yet another law to transform the national health service. The question isn’t whether we’re going to have a date when we reform the SNS, the question is how we can permanently adjust the national health service to the needs that arise,” emphasises the economist.

There are many complaints from users about the SNS, namely the compulsory pre-screening via telephone before going to emergency, which delays medical interventions even more, since in hospitals, patients are still subject to long waiting times.

“Just last week, with a relative of mine who was referred to the emergency room by Saúde 24, we were there for almost 12 hours. And as far as I can tell, I don’t think it was too bad. There were cases of patients who had been there since the night before. I went there at around 1pm and left at half past midnight,” an SNS user told Euronews.

The Movement of Public Service Users (MUSP) has already said in a statement that the Ministry of Health knows that “the long queues are the result of a lack of professionals and conditions to retain them and attract them to the SNS”.

In the MUSP’s opinion, the “government responds with a bureaucratic measure, hiring a health call centre, creating yet another barrier and delaying the treatment” to a serious problem that required serious and profound measures, namely more investment in the SNS and its professionals.

Between 2020 and 2024, the level of satisfaction with public healthcare in Europe fell from 74 per cent to 56 per cent, according to a report by German pharmaceutical company Stada. Only 49 per cent of Portuguese said they were satisfied with the response of the SNS.

In the Euro Health Consumer Index, Portugal ranks 13th out of 35 European countries. Leading the ranking is Switzerland, followed by the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark.

The Minister of Health has already recognised that “it is unacceptable” to have waiting times of tens of hours in emergency services and has promised to take action soon.

Euronews asked Ana Paula Martins’ office about the additional measures being considered by the government, but received no reply by the time this article was published.