A new study warns that if nothing is done, a million calls to telephone triage for access to emergency services in the NHS will go unanswered during the autumn-winter.
According to , a study will be published in an international scientific journal in the coming days that reveals that, in the cold months, the SNS24 could leave 1 million calls hanging.
“Projections for the beginning of 2026 anticipate up to 900,000 monthly call attempts, potentially leaving almost 300,000 calls unanswered in a single month. These numbers add up to more than one million unanswered calls throughout the winter and are a conservative estimate, as we assume that mandatory telephone screening will not be implemented in the 12 local health units that have not yet joined the program, a population of approximately 2.5 million users”, say the authors, cited by the weekly.
The authors remember that the answering time for any incoming call should not be longer than 15 seconds. Last Saturday, the same newspaper exemplifies, a user in Famalicão was on hold for more than 40 minutes without result and was only answered on the fourth call.
In other cases, users hang up after 20 minutes and no one calls back.
The risk of disruption is justified by the successive increase in tasks assigned by the Government without a proportional reinforcement of human and technological resources.
“Although the policy was concerned with increasing access to emergency care, the line was implemented quickly without corresponding investment in infrastructure (…) has been operating above its capacity for more than two years”.
“O increase in activity was expected and desirable, but requires reinforcement. The SNS24 Line is not responding and the patient is left without a solution. Waiting times are increasing because the increase in demand has not been accompanied by an increase in supply”, corroborates the Health economist and one of the authors of the study, Eduardo Costa.
