Pedro Nunes, chairman of the Board of Directors of Centro Hospitalar do Algarve (CHA), admitted in statements to Sul Informação, have sent a letter on 4 September to the Regional Health Administration terminating the agreement for the Palliative Care Unit of the Hospital de Portimão, such as the our newspaper revealed saturday.
Always skilful with words, Pedro Nunes admits: “we want to renegotiate the contract and for that we have to denounce it first”, adding that “the intention in denouncing the contract is not to close anything. We even want to go beyond what exists now, expanding the network of convalescence and palliative care».
«We want to sign another contract», keeping «the unit at Hospital de Portimão and opening another one in Lagos». Therefore, said the official, "it was interested in terminating the contract to negotiate the conditions of admission of patients and the financing conditions" of the services.
Although Pedro Nunes reaffirms the guarantees given on Friday to the Sul Informação that «it never crossed anyone's mind to close the service», a medical source told our newspaper that, if these last statements are true, what the administrator of the Hospital Center of the Algarve intends to do is «withdraw the palliative care of the Hospital de Portimão from the National Continued Care Network, dispersing the beds by one a service he now calls convalescent and palliative care».
And why do you want that service to no longer be integrated into the Network? It has everything to do with funding the CHA, guarantees the medical source. «The Continuing Care Network, contracted through the ARS, pays a hundred and a few euros per patient admitted to Palliative Care and the service demands are enormous, in terms of medical staff, nursing care and therapists, which entails increased costs . But if what the State pays is normal hospital beds, with different uses, without this Network formalism, then each bed will be paid at 600 to 700 euros. It's more money coming into the CHA».
Palliative care can lose quality and demand
And isn't that good, as funding is increased? “The problem is that Palliative Care is a very specific service, for terminally ill patients, which in fact has to have very high requirements. If the service in Portimão is removed from the National Network, if what could eventually be created in Lagos is not part of the Network, then it will be selling a pig in a poke, offering a lower quality service, despite of having a similar name. Now, in health, and especially in these cases where the dignity of the person is also at stake, the quality of the service provided is fundamental”, he explained to Sul Informação another source of hospital staff.
The aforementioned medical source even recalled that, in a recent meeting, Pedro Nunes would have considered it a luxury for the Palliative Care Unit to have individual rooms. “Rooms with one bed? This cannot be because it is not profitable, said Dr. Pedro Nunes at a meeting», guaranteed the contacted source.
But if the idea is really not to close anything, on the contrary, to increase it, albeit according to a new scheme, then why have the family room at UCP Portimonense already closed? Pedro Nunes guarantees that he knows nothing about this matter. "I didn't have any room closed," he says. And, by way of explanation, he adds: «each one does what he/she wants and he/she wants at the Hospital of Portimão!».
«This statement by Dr. Pedro Nunes that he doesn't know anything about the closing of the room is absurd», guarantees the hospital source. «The closing of this room reveals the level of quality that is intended for the service. It is a room where families receive the news. It has to be a more reserved space, with some dignity, to accommodate situations that are difficult», added the doctor contacted by our newspaper.
Lagos as a hospital dedicated to Palliatives and Convalescence
As for the replacement of the director of Palliative Care at the Hospital de Portimão, that the Sul Informação denounced, the chairman of the CA of the CHA says that «Dr. Madalena Sales, as long as she wants to keep running this unit, she will continue to do so. For the broader project, which includes Portimão, Lagos, Loulé and Olhão, we have named another person, Dr. Dagoberta».
Anticipating other possible uncomfortable issues, Pedro Nunes added that «the Palliative Unit does not appear in the new organizational chart of the Hospital de Portimão because, in reality, it does not belong to the hospital», since it is a contracted service within the scope of the RNCC.
As for the Hospital de Lagos, the administrator of the CHA guaranteed that “its 40 beds are necessary”. For, he announced, "the Convalescence and Palliative Care Unit will be installed there." “Those who are convalescing or undergoing palliative care can be in Lagos, because they will no longer be so dependent on medical examinations or specialties that can only be provided in Portimão. Convalescent patients or those with less serious illnesses will have full support there, particularly at the level of nursing».
«Lagos is the closest natural hospital, which will have less acute beds and of those who are already in such serious situations that they no longer need to be in a Hospital like the one in Portimão, with all the exams, etc.», he stressed.
Finally, Pedro Nunes admitted that the termination of the UCP contract “was not supposed to be public”. "But what matters is that, in six months' time, we will have a new framework with a new contract, but to increase Palliative Care and Convalescence."
The Palliative Care Unit in Portimão is part of the National Network for Continuing Care, which, in the Algarve, is managed by the ARS. This UCP was installed at Hospital do Barlavento through an agreement signed on April 20, 2009 between the then CHBA and ARS.
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