The president of the National Institute of Medical Emergency (INEM) said this Tuesday, February 3, that the new triage model “will have safeguarded” aid in “peak periods”, arguing that the differentiation between priorities made it possible to avoid more deaths.
Luís Mendes Cabral defended at the Health Commission that the new triage system, in force since January, made it possible to distinguish true emergencies from less serious situationsconsidering that the previous model classified “more than 80% of occurrences” as P3, a “single generic group (…) without any other differentiation of means”.
“It will have safeguarded us in those peak periods. This response is necessary especially in peak situations. We know that, while we are undergoing 4,500 daily calls to the Urgent Patient Guidance Centers (CODU), we are able to provide a very quick and complete response to the requests”, said the person in charge, who is being heard at the request of the PS and Chega, following the death of a 78-year-old man in Seixal, after waiting around three hours for help.
At the beginning of the year, the National Institute of Medical Emergency (INEM) began implementing a new telephone triage system in CODU, aligned with the model used in hospitals and based on five priority levels: emergent, very urgent, urgent, less urgent and non-urgent.
Now, each category has defined response times, from immediate action in life-threatening cases to 120 minutes in non-urgent situations, with non-urgent situations forwarded directly to SNS 24.
Users are now informed of the assigned priority, the estimated time of arrival and the decided route.
In parliament, Luís Mendes Cabral recalled that the lack of differentiation compromised media management.
“We treated an acute myocardial infarction the same way we treated a sprain, or we treated a stroke the same way we treated a burn.”he noted.
The person responsible reinforced that levels P1 and P2 are reserved for medical emergencies, with response times between 8 and 18 minutes, and P3 and P4 for less urgent situations, with times of up to 60 and 120 minutes.
“If we had responded to the Seixal situation within 60 minutes, the outcome probably would not have been the same”, he admitted.
The president of INEM also indicated that the change did not change the questions, flowcharts or technicians, but only the clinical interpretation of the symptoms.
Luís Mendes Cabral also recognized structural limitations in the Setúbal Peninsula and in the Algarve, which are aggravated during periods of greatest demand.
“For most of the country, we are working well. The problem is concentrated on the south bank”, he regretted, adding that the Portuguese Firefighters League (LBP) reported that it no longer had ambulances available to hire in the region.
The official stated that the reinforcement of resources and the reorganization of screening made it possible to avoid new serious cases.
“Most likely, if we hadn’t made this distinction, we would be talking about more death situations today,” he concluded.
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