Mário Cruz / Lusa
Waiting times are “unworthy” and leaves very urgent sick waiting up to 8 hours. Hospital will join as it “requires” the user to connect first to the SNS24 line.
Last Saturday, January 25, the Fernando da Fonseca Hospital, integrated at the Local Health Unit (ULS) of Amadora-Sintra, received in its three emergencies 471 patients. 76 eventually abandoned the place without ever being attended, as reported. On the 26th, Sunday, the situation was repeated.
891 urgent patients, 152 dropouts.
“There was urgent patientsscreen with yellow bracelet, which had to wait between 31h e 34h to be observed by a doctor, and sick very urgentwith orange bracelet, who waited between 6H A 8H“They tell user. Hospitals sources ensure that “such waiting times had never been recorded. ”
The problem has been aggravated due to the overcrowding of the emergencies of nearby ULS. Amadora-Sintra will have received users of these hospitals, which worsened the waiting times.
Now, Amadora-Sintra will join the project ““, which “forces” users to call the SNS24 first before they go to the emergency room to make a first screening. If the patient comes to emergencies without calling, the number is supplied to him to call it.
The President of the National Federation of Doctors (FNAM), JOana Bordalo and Sá, guarantees that these waiting times “They are unworthy, but they don’t surprise us“, And ensures that the region surrounding the hospital” should be a worst zones in the shortage of family doctors and, therefore, the gateway to care for many users is that of urgency. “
The hospital “has emergency services that work with extreme difficulty due to the lack of human resources, especially doctors. And many functions are in charge of internal doctors, especially from the specialty of internal medicine, which are eventually scaled to do urgency and overtime, ”says the president of FNAM.
And this situation “not only puts into question the health of the professionals themselves, but the care they provide, because No one stands to be systematically doing overtime. ”
The problem? “Lack of human resources. And if Amadora-Sintra already has pressure throughout the year in its urgency, this time of year, with the peak of the even worse respiratory infections, ”says Joana Bordalo and Sá.
According to the DN, the waiting time on the SNS website is not always reliable: an estimate is presented, which can sometimes be much lower than the reality of the time spent at emergencies.
