Last year, the Health Regulatory Authority (ERS) received 994 complaints related to problems in accompanying patients to emergency services, a right enshrined in law a decade ago.
The recent disappearance of a lady with Alzheimer's, after being prevented from entering the Francisco Xavier Hospital's emergency room with a companion, raised awareness of failures in the application of legislation that has existed since 2014.
The right to be accompanied into any health service gives special attention to hospitalized children, people with disabilities, those in a situation of dependency or patients at the end of their lives.
However, there continue to be cases of caregivers unable to accompany patients, Catarina Alvarez, from the Portuguese Association of Relatives and Friends of Alzheimer's Patients, told Lusa.
In the last two years, ERS received almost two thousand complaints related to failures in monitoring during the provision of care: In 2022 there were 1.018 complaints and, last year, another 944.
Cases in which non-compliance with the law leads to people's disappearance are rare, but there are many stories of those who are prevented from accompanying family or friends, highlighted Catarina Alvarez, adding that she recently learned of yet another situation.
Lusa spoke to a family who recently had this experience. Inês (fictitious name) said that her mother was admitted to the emergency room of a hospital unit in Coimbra, where her caregiver was prevented from entering, despite having alerted the hospital that the woman had Alzheimer's.
«For more than 48 hours I didn't know where my mother was», she told Lusa Inês, adding that they chose not to file a complaint, because the family fears having to return to the same hospital unit.
Just like this case, many of the outbursts made to the Portuguese Association of Family and Friends of Alzheimer's Patients do not appear in official statistics.
«These situations happen with some frequency. Most of the time the outcome is positive, the person is found by a family member or someone else, but the risk of disappearance is quite high and the person may not be found», warned Catarina Alvarez.
Therefore, Alzheimer Portugal signed the petition launched this month by the family of Avelina Ferreira, aged 73, who disappeared on December 12th last year. The petition calls for mechanisms to prevent the disappearance of people with dementia.
The woman was admitted to the emergency room of São Francisco Xavier alone because her husband was prevented from accompanying her. After seven hours in the waiting room, the family realized she was missing.
"We also appeal to citizens to sign the petition, because this is a way of making this problem visible to improve prevention and response", said the association's spokesperson.
Over the years, the ERS has issued several instructions to health services to correct the flaws detected in the right to monitoring of users and in two cases the ERS has filed administrative offense proceedings, the ERS press office revealed to Lusa.
None of the cases involved teachers with dementia. One of the complaints dates back to 2017 and occurred in the Medical Oncology service of the Instituto Português de Oncologia do Porto Francisco Gentil, another occurred in 2018 at the Centro Hospitalar Universitário do Algarve. Both health units were fined a fine of 2.500 euros.
In 2017, the daughter of a cancer patient hospitalized in a very serious condition, «with indications given by clinicians that she would have around 24 hours of survival, asked to spend the night with her mother». The request was denied.
In 2018, the failure was due to the duty to guarantee the companion's right to be informed within a reasonable time about the patient's situation. The complainant's mother was informed of her mother's death just three days after the incident, following an attempted visit.
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