Nuno Veiga / Lusa
The executive director of the National Health Service (SNS), Álvaro Almeida
The executive director of the National Health Service, Álvaro Almeida, estimated this Wednesday that there are around 2,800 undue admissions to hospitals, either due to social situations or the lack of beds in long-term care.
“We know that it is a reality that we have in the SNS that there are a few thousand, around 2,800 casesof people who should not be admitted to acute hospitals, either because they should have already had access to beds in the national network of continued or integrated care, or because they should have been referred for responses of a social nature”, he told journalists.
According to the person responsible, if it is possible to resolve the two areas involved in undue hospitalizations, “space to have more treble beds in the units”.
The director of the SNS estimates that in the National Continuing Care Network there are “around 1,500 beds authorized to open in the coming months”, but admitted that such won’t come in time for the flu peak.
“In the social area, the Government is trying to find solutions for the approximately 800 to 1,000 cases we have of hospitalizations purely social.”, said Álvaro Almeida, during a visit to Santos Silva Hospital, in Vila Nova de Gaia.
“We had 747 duly recognized and validated by Social Security as cases that require a social response, and there are other cases that hospitals refer to as social, but have not yet been recognized by Social Security, hence the numbers are different“, he detailed.
At issue is the difference between cases that are already recognized and those that were indicated by hospitals. “This difference explains some divergence of numbers. But we are talking about 1,000 social cases and 2,000 in the rest”, he summarized.
On Monday, the Minister of Health estimated that there more than 1,200 cases social services in hospitals, of people who were clinically discharged but with no response elsewhere, and said that in the coming days there should be a solution for a few hundred.
“We have been working for about a year with Social Security. I hope that in the next few days we will have news on this matter”, said the minister Ana Paula Martins, after a visit to the Vila Franca de Xira Hospital, in the Lisbon district.
The government official hopes to find solutions “at least for a few hundred people”, so that “can leave hospitals, where they should not be. It is a very big risk to have a user who has already been discharged who does not need to be in a hospital”, he highlighted.
The governor acknowledged that “it doesn’t happen from one day to the next” that places can be found for these people and explained that, at a national level, the 800 users who were already registered with clinical discharge, but with no other response, were joined by another 400.
“It’s an impossible situation to maintain. We are in Christmas week, New Year week and we need to have beds to hospitalize people who need to be hospitalized”, he added.
