The profile has been drawn up: there will be 742 beds, 18 operating rooms, 74 consultation offices, three CT scan machines and many more facilities. The “Review of the Care Profile and Dimensioning” of the Algarve Central Hospital was published by the Government, this Monday, February 12th, in Diário da República, but the timing is generating controversy. With very tight dates and elections just around the corner, there are those who accuse the Government of thinking that the people of the Algarve “are stupid”.
The order, signed by Minister Manuel Pizarro, explains that this review was based on “a broad set of demographic and assistance information on the population served by the New Hospital Central do Algarve”.
«This review valued the intensification of outpatient surgical activity, and the significant expansion of technological incorporation and renewal. At the same time, the experience accumulated in all public hospitals has also recommended a review of the inpatient care profile, with an increase in the number of beds, also responding to the increase in the average duration of medical hospitalizations, as a result of increased longevity, the complexity of pathologies and situations of multiple serious comorbidities», it also reads.
Thus, the profile presents as «minimum capacity requirements a total of 742 beds».
According to the order, “this dimension includes 619 conventional inpatient beds, 36 inpatient beds in psychiatry, 10 inpatient beds in child and adolescent psychiatry, in addition to 77 special inpatient beds (39 in intensive care medicine) adults, 6 from pediatric intensive care, 6 from the cardiology intensive care unit, 9 from the stroke unit and 17 from neonatology care)».
Home hospitalization, palliative care, a total of 18 operating room rooms, 74 consultation rooms, a birthing block with 10 rooms and various day hospitals are also considered.
Finally, the equipment includes three CT scanners, three nuclear magnetic resonance devices, three angiographs, 1 PET/CT, a gamma camera, two linear accelerators and brachytherapy equipment. Reserve spaces will also be provided to add new equipment of different types.
The controversy appears further down in the document.
Published on February 12th, the Minister of Health determines that the project team must present the functional program of the New Hospital Central do Algarve to the supervisory authority… during the first fortnight of February. In other words: within three days.
Cristóvão Norte, president of the PSD/Algarve and second on the list of deputies of the Democratic Alliance (AD) for the Algarve in the Legislatures of March 10, has already gone public to criticize these timings.
«No one believes it! The PS Government now comes with an order in Diário da República dated February 12th wanting to move forward with the new Algarve Hospital. An order that gives three, yes, you read that correctly, 3 days for the project team to present the functional program for the new hospital. It is still being built at this rate before the elections!”, he says, in a post on social media.
The social democrat goes further and even accuses the PS of engaging in “sloppy politics”.
“These people sometimes think we are stupid. The order makes you laugh: this only serves to deceive people. They made the order to say that the Hospital will be a reality when they spent years doing nothing», he concludes.
The order also has a particularity: despite being published on February 12th, it is signed with the date… February 2nd, 2023.
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