Strategic Plan for Improving Short-Term Access wants to put an end to “excessive waiting times”.
The government will announce a new measure that reinforces collaboration between public and private hospitals: when the SUS is unable to respond to the long queue, operations are carried out in private — and paid for by the public.
The objective of the measure is to reduce the number of patients waiting beyond the regulatory times, put an end to “excessive waiting times” and “making Local Health Units (ULS) increasingly responsible for treating their patients”, explained a source from the Ministry of Health to .
The measure meets the needs of 69,786 non-urgent patients who had, this Monday, exceeded the waiting time, as highlighted by
Now, the hospitals of the 39 Local Health Units (ULS) that exist in the country are unable to operate patients until August 2025 should be transferred to units in the “social and private sectors”. Billing will be done in the name of ULS itself.
These hospitals will have until December 31st to deliver a listing of patients who have already exceeded the Maximum Guaranteed Response Time (TMRG), as well as the date of surgery, already scheduled.
After operations schedules closed for the first 8 months of next year, this list cannot be changed.
Then, the SNS “will assess the need for additional measures to be adopted in relation to users who do not confirm their desire to join the list made by hospitals or who did not obtain a surgical appointment”.
Out of the equation are the “users classified as non-transferable at the Hospital of Origin (HO), on the date of creation of the initial list, and there is no issuance of surgical vouchers to users who make up this list”.
A “surgery scheduling system must also be created which should combine, in addition to clinical and chronological criteria, the selection of users who, preferably, have proximity between the Destination Hospital (HD) and the Origin Hospital (HO)although the distance to the HD can be increased so that users from geographic regions with a smaller supply of entities in the social and private sectors are able to join the program and have their surgical condition resolved”.
This measure is part of the Health Emergency and Transformation Plan (PETS), approved on May 29, and wants to “make ULS responsible for the treatment of their patients, either in terms of targets to be achieved or in the commitments made in the budgets”, says the Ministry source.
But the AD government had already implemented, in the summer, a measure that aimed to reduce the waiting period for cancer patients: payment for exceptional surgical activity to teams was 90% more than the base cost to the NHS.
In April this year, the specialties with the highest number of patients on the waiting list were orthopedics, general surgery, otorhinolaryngology and urology.
According to data provided by the SNS Executive Board to DN, on November 1, 2024, there were 263 978 patients waiting for surgery, of which 76,740 had already exceeded the TMRG. Yesterday, however, this number had already reduced to 69,786.
Still, the document indicates that this is a number that registers a significant increase compared to the same period last year.
The document also points to the fact that “a very high number of patients awaiting surgery with TMRG already overcome, which led the Working Group responsible for preparing the PETS to carry out an assessment of these users in order to create a extraordinary transferable list for entities in the social and private sectors, a transfer that is also regulated in this ordinance”.
Even though the document does not present, for now, values, it is already known that social and private units that accept to operate on these patients will have to apply for this program identifying surgical specialties and the procedures in which they intend to participate. The procedure will be defined by the Central Administration of the Health System.
