Three non-covid patients, coming from the Internal Medicine service at the hospital in Portimão, will today be transferred to the first floor of the Hospital de São Gonçalo, in Lagos, where this Thursday an extension of the inpatient and operating room, managed by University Hospital Center of the Algarve (CHUA).
In total, the new inpatient wing, which now occupies part of the private hospital building, has a capacity for 26 patients, which is its "official maximum capacity", as he told the Sul Informação Dr. Ana Baptista, coordinator of the service.
For her part, Ana Castro, chairman of the Board of Directors of CHUA, explained that "these 28 beds that we will be able to use for non-covid patients allow us to transfer patients from the hospital in Portimão to here."
This transfer guarantees the freeing up of space in the hospital of Portimão for the response to patients with covid and thus "gain more room to reorganize services, especially the one that has us most concerned, which is the Intensive Care", he added.
This measure of expansion of the hospital internship capacity, translated by the opening of wards and operating room, accompanied by the clinical team of the University Hospital Center of the Algarve, thus aims to continue to ensure the response in the other specialties and simultaneously release vacancies in reference hospitals to increase the response of Intensive Care and for more differentiated patients.
All hospital logistics, clinical management of spaces and monitoring of patients in the new space is guaranteed by the CHUA professional teams.
Paulo Neves, member of the Board of Directors of CHUA, assured our newspaper that the expansion of internment to the new space in Lagos does not create human resources problems. “Basically, the service that was previously installed in the hospital in Portimão is transferred here, bringing its doctors, nurses and patients,” he explained.
Paulo Morgado, president of the Algarve Regional Health Administration (ARS), added that “there was an anticipation strategy to strengthen human resources throughout the summer, both by the ARS and by the CHUA. In total, since the 1st wave, over 700 health professionals have been hired» in the Algarve region.
Unlike the Hospital de Santa Maria, in Faro, a private unit that was closed and reopened this week also to accommodate non-covid CHUA patients, having been given to the National Health Service free of charge, ARS Algarve will now pay 30 thousand euros per month for the use of the entire first floor (infirmaries plus operating room) of the Hospital de São Gonçalo, in Lagos.
César Santos, administrator of the HPA Saúde Group, owner of the private hospital unit, in statements to Sul Informação, he underlined that that business group “has in its DNA to give support whenever it is called, that's why we are here”.
«In April, at the height of the 1st wave of Covid-19, we had a Covid hospital operating here, in São Gonçalo. In May, when it was no longer necessary, we resumed normal activity, with the exception of hospitalizations. With tourism down, we didn't have this internment working, so we could now dispense with this area to the NHS», he said.
The new ward for non-covid patients managed by CHUA occupies the entire first floor of the Hospital de São Gonçalo de Lagos, which, however, continues to function fully (consultations, permanent care, examinations) on the ground floor. «We serve 400 to 500 people a day here, at Hospital de São Gonçalo», revealed César Santos.
"We continued to function fully, we just transferred all the outpatient surgeries that were done here to our unit in Alvor", he concluded.
This afternoon, even before the first three patients from the hospital in Portimão entered the new hospitalization at CHUA, there was a blessing of the facilities by Father Abílio Almeida, parish priest of Lagos.
The opening moment of the new premises, which our newspaper followed, was attended by the members of the Board of Directors of CHUA, the presidents of ARS Algarve and the City Council of Lagos, as well as administrators of the HPA Saúde Group.
Photos: Elisabete Rodrigues | Sul Informação
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