The creation of the Hospital Center of the Algarve, through the merger of the Hospital Center of the Barlavento Algarvio (CHBA) and the Hospital de Faro, announced today by the Government, will bring "more charges", "the closure of some services in Portimão" and even "redundancies".
This is the conviction of Luís Batalau, former chairman of the Board of Directors of CHBA. In declarations to the Sul Informação, Batalau said that, despite not having «knowledge of details, or details, about the structure of the new Hospital Center in the Algarve», he has no doubts that this measure will not reduce costs in the short or medium term, on the contrary , will even increase them».
“If services and services at the CHBA are reduced, as may be being considered, these patients will have to end up somewhere. And will have to go to Faro, with all the travel costs that this represents”, stressed Luís Batalau.
On the other hand, he stressed, if the idea is to solve the needs of the HDF, “I'm not seeing the doctors at the Hospital do Barlavento, except with a machine gun behind them, going to make emergencies to Faro».
The former CHBA administrator also fears that several services will be closed in Portimão to try to solve the problems of 'weakened services in Faro», transferring the professionals who currently work in the city of Barlaventina to there. These are the cases of Obstetrics, Ophthalmology, Otorhinolaryngology, Radiology or even Orthopedics.
«And then what happens to a pregnant woman in Aljezur or Vila do Bispo who has to go to give birth to Faro?”, he asks.
«Maybe we're going to spoil the good things that exist in Portimão, and we're not going to improve the bad things in Faro», commented.
But Batalau also says he has little doubt that "redundancies" are being prepared in the two hospitals that until now were part of the CHBA – Portimão and Lagos.
Also concerned is Manuel da Luz, the mayor of Portimão, who says he does not know "concretely the content of the project". "I fear that it may mean a reduction in clinical skills at Centro Hospitalar do Barlavento," said the mayor.
Manuel da Luz even admits that there may be a «regional management» of hospital structures, as long as this does not mean «reduction of services in both Portimão and hospitals. Faro».
But he claims that he has not yet understood "in practice how the management structure of the Centro Hospitalar do Algarve will be made", which the mayor of Portimão suspects that it may not result in "an effective cost reduction".
President of ARS/Algarve allays fears
Despite these fears, the president of the Algarve Regional Health Administration (ARS) has already assured that the extinction of services in the hospitals of Portimão and Lagos is not foreseen, with the creation of the Hospital Center of the Algarve.
Martins dos Santos guaranteed that "it would not make sense for there to be extinction of services, since Barlavento continues to have its patients". What will happen is «an improvement in the accessibility to these areas because we are going to increase the number of specialists in the region», said the president of the ARS.
The same official stressed that the merger of the three hospitals in the region into a single structure, according to the model proposed by the ARS/Algarve, approved on Wednesday by the Council of Ministers and announced today, aims to ensure better management of resources at a regional level. . And he even gave the example of Urgency, where sometimes the provision of health care in certain specialties in that area was uncovered in one or another hospital, forcing the patient to be transferred to Lisbon.
Now, “when there is no possibility for the patient to be treated in the hospital of Faro will be dealt with in Portimão and vice versa», explained Martins dos Santos.
With the reorganization of services that the merger into the Centro Hospitalar do Algarve intends to promote, the president of the ARS even considers that the travel of patients to Lisbon will be reduced, while at the same time it will be possible to attract more professionals to the region, which lacks doctors in many areas.
These words by Martins dos Santos were reinforced this afternoon in a statement by the Board of Directors of the Regional Health Administration of the Algarve, which considered that «the creation of the Algarve Hospital Center will allow a more adequate response to the chronic constraints of the Health sector in the Region in terms of human resources, namely, as a measure of assistance reorganization and restructuring of existing services, favoring a more efficient policy of making the most of technical and human resources and the development of complementary assistance mechanisms between the three hospitals».
«The creation of this new organizational structure means an opportunity to make the Algarve more self-sufficient in terms of hospital health services, in order to avoid the displacement of users outside the Region», guarantees that body.
Simultaneously, defends the Board of Directors of the ARS, the measure "enables a new dynamization of services with the reinforcement of the various specialties in the hospital area, providing a significant improvement, more rigorous and more efficient in terms of management in terms of centralization of purchases that will allow for gains in economies of scale'.
"By strengthening the articulation of the care activity of hospitals, it will be possible to boost efficiency and rationalize the management of the scarce resources available in the Region, particularly human resources, with advantages in the accessibility of patients to quality health care" , concludes the ARS communiqué.
New administration not yet announced
For now, it has not yet been announced who will be the chairman of the Board of Directors of the new Centro Hospitalar do Algarve, nor what the structure of the new administration will be, despite Martins dos Santos announcing that there will be a reduction in expenses with management positions, which will halve , from ten to five.
Yesterday's statement by the Council of Ministers, released this morning after a government meeting that lasted into the night, says that «the benefits arising from the creation of the new Hospital Center in the Algarve are at the levels of care, of clinical quality, organizational and managerial, with particular focus on the rationalization and adequacy of clinical acts and referral of patients».
“A policy of greater territorial equity is thus implemented, carrying out a more rational and efficient use of available resources,” the statement also says.
Updated at 17:18 pm, adding the content of the ARS communiqué.
Comments