The Government’s program, submitted to parliament today, introduces measures to enhance the National Health Service’s (SNS) urgent and emergency care response, ensuring a “better adjustment of the network to the population’s needs and available resources.”
The document highlights that priority will be given to critical specialties, namely obstetrics and pediatrics, “particularly through the creation of regional emergency services composed of shared health teams between hospitals.”
In the hospital care domain, Luís Montenegro’s government plans to develop and implement a new National Access System for Consultations and Surgeries (SINACC), which will also include timely access to complementary diagnostic means, replacing the current Integrated Surgery Enrollment Management System (SIGIC).
The ministry aims to establish a chronic patient manager, provide incentives for healthcare professionals performing emergency duties, and promote regional and national audits of the guaranteed maximum response times (TMRG) concerning surgical waitlists in the hospital network.
The program also indicates that the status of University Hospitals will evolve into University Clinical Centers, adopting a new governance and financing model, aligning legal frameworks to reconcile clinical and academic careers, in “close cooperation” with the government sectors of Education, Science and Innovation, and Public Administration.
For INEM, the reform envisions transforming the institute into a National Medical Emergency Authority to ensure “effective, efficient, and sustainable services” by altering its legal nature, competencies and responsibilities, financing model, budgetary and management control, operational model, and the functional profile and skills of its human resources.
To “tackle inequality in healthcare access,” the program proposes measures for primary healthcare, including agreements with family doctors from social and private sectors and expanding model C Family Health Units, managed by private entities in areas with low coverage of general and family medicine specialists.
Without specifying figures, the Government’s program aims to ensure timely family doctor consultations and continuous family healthcare access (family nurse), “effectively prioritizing population groups identified as priority during the current legislative period.”
It also schedules the reinforcement of continued and palliative care networks through new Public Social Partnerships for palliative care units and second-generation continued care units.
The XXV Constitutional Government’s program, emerging from the May 18 elections won by the AD coalition (PSD/CDS), was delivered to the Assembly of the Republic today by Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Carlos Abreu Amorim.
The document was approved in the Council of Ministers on Thursday and will be debated in the Assembly of the Republic on Tuesday and Wednesday.
