The Portuguese Association of Hospital Administrators (APAH) today accused the Ministry of Finance of failing the hiring proposed in the hospitals' activity plans and budgets and lamented the lack of an explanation for this decision.
“The [budgets] that were approved were amputated from the contracts they had proposed,” Xavier Barreto, president of APAH, told the Lusa agency, giving Hospital de Gaia as an example: “They made a large contract proposal, which was seen as excessive and [ the hires] were failed”.
In July, when it was reported that hospitals were seeing many of the proposed hires rejected, it was announced that Hospital de Gaia had proposed around 600 hires and only 40 had been authorized.
Xavier Barreto lamented the “lack of sensitivity” of the Ministry of Finance, recalling: “Hospitals make these hiring requests precisely to have full rosters and, ultimately, stop having overtime.”
“It makes a lot more sense to have people working than to pay overtime. It’s not just in terms of efficiency, even in terms of the quality of care provided, it’s completely different to have a tired person working for hours and hours or to have a person who only works the hours stipulated in their contract”, he explained.
The representative of hospital administrators said he did not understand “the rationale behind the finances”, adding that this cut in proposed hiring is happening to many hospitals.
“The hospitals we spoke to, and we spoke to many, came with their human resources plans failed, that is, the hiring proposals were all rejected by Finance”, he lamented.
He recalled that this issue does not arise in the case of emergency doctors, as hospitals have already had hiring autonomy since last year, but for all other professionals.
“There is this idea that hospitals make proposals that have no rationale, no explanation. But this is an idea that makes no sense at all. If hospitals make a proposal to hire 10, 20 or 30 nurses, they do so because, in fact, they need those nurses, for all reasons, but often because of a need to reduce costs with overtime”, he stated, adding : “We are very sorry that Finance did not have this idea”.
If there were any doubts about the proposal presented by the hospitals – he continued – “what would make sense was for the plan to be returned”, asking the hospitals to reformulate the requests, or reduce them, due to lack of budget, for example.
“At least there would be some communication between those who fail and those who send them. But not. They just say 'approved, with the exception of the human resources framework'”, she stressed.
According to Xavier Barreto, by October 01st, 22 hospital activity and budget plans had been approved (albeit with cuts in proposed hiring) and 17 were yet to be approved.
In two cases (Hospital do Oeste and Instituto Português de Oncologia de Coimbra) the information available on the website of the Technical Unit for Monitoring and Monitoring of the Public Business Sector (UTAM) is not clear as to whether the plans were approved or not.
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