DE-SUS said that the preparation and management of emergency schedules for regional emergencies will be coordinated between the duty directors of the respective local health units (ULS), under its coordination.
The teams from ULS Loures/Odivelas will ensure 80% of the continuous provision of emergency care and those from ULS Esttuário do Tejo the remaining 20%but the South Zone Doctors’ Union has already warned that, despite the Loures Hospital now having an increase in service, the team “will only have the reinforcement of a nurse who will go from Vila Franca de Xira”.
Despite the closure of the obstetric emergency in Vila Franca de Xira, which also serves the municipalities of Azambuja, Arruda dos Vinhos, Alenquer and Benavente, the executive management clarified that the This hospital’s maternity ward will continue to operate.
All remaining activity remains operational at Vila Franca de Xira Hospital, including scheduled births and open gynecology and obstetrics consultations for non-urgent acute illnesses, said DE-SNS.
The entity led by Álvaro Almeida justified the creation of regional emergencies due to the lack of specialized professionals in some areas of the countrywhich means that it is not possible to guarantee full teams in certain services in some periods.
The National Federation of Doctors (Fnam) warned, however, that the measure could be more comprehensive, with leader Joana Bordalo e Sá telling Lusa that the perspective is that regional emergencies will extend to several specialties – not just obstetrics and gynecology – and “across the country”.
The Government predicted that the regional emergency department in the Setúbal Peninsula, which will be located at the Almada Hospital and which will lead to the closure of the emergency department in Barreiro, would be the first in the country to start operating, going so far as to say that it would be at the beginning of this year, but, this week, minister Ana Paula Martins said that this will only happen when the joint scales are completed.
A regional emergency is based on an exceptional model in which two or more nearby ULS concentrate emergency care in a single hospitalwhen it is not possible to keep emergency departments operating in all of them at the same time.
This new model provides for biannual assessments of the functioning of regional centralized emergencies.
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