It is recalled that the letter sent to the Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, on Wednesday night, by the directors of the Cardiology Service of four hospitals in the North – Santo António, Vila real, Matosinhos and Penafiel – warned of the fact that the reference centers that provide care in the area of cardiac surgery and aortic implantation, in the hospitals of Gaia and São João, are overloaded and unable to respond to all patients in an adequate time, while there are services in the region that have infrastructure and technical skills to provide this care and cannot do so.
The director of the Cardiology Service at Hospital de Santo António, André Luz, confirmed this situation to DN, further explaining that “no one wants to take anything from anyone. Our objective is to be able to treat patients”.
But assuming that the hospitals in Santo António and Viela Real have the infrastructure and technical skills to treat their own patients instead of referring them to Gaia and São João, is generating “friction” between services. Gaia, for example, and in response to DN’s questions, considers that if there are investments from the authority in this area, they must be made in the services that are part of the network of reference centers.
The Cardiology service director explains that, for now, we want to be able to treat our patients so that they are not on the waiting list, then we can discuss our integration into the network of reference centers.
On the side of the Medical Association, the president of the College of Cardiothoracic Surgery, José Neves, defended to DN that there is a reference network and that it must be respected.
The Ministry of Health, on the other hand, and in responses to the DN, assumed that it had nothing to oppose the creation of a unit, as long as their creation was a deliberation of the Board of Directors of ULS Santo António.
On Thursday, DN questioned the ULSSA CA about what he would do next and the objectives he had for the future, but received no response. But he has also questioned the Executive Directorate of the SNS and the General Directorate of Health, who are responsible for finding “urgent solutions” for the waiting lists, as he told DN, the Ministry of Health, about what they would do in relation to this situation, and also received no answers.
In its statement, the Medical Association recalls that “the National Cardiac Surgery Referral Network was created to concentrate skills, guarantee differentiated teams and ensure quality and clinical safety. Its most recent update, in 2023, integrated new hospital units, but any structural change must be supported by solid technical evidence and accompanied by adequate human resources”.
On the other hand, he warns that “the shortage of doctors specializing in cardiac surgery is a known reality, which makes the balance of the network particularly sensitive to hasty decisions or budget restrictions that unfortunately the 2026 Budget is imposing in many areas”.
Leave a Reply