The INEM workers’ committee refuses to be a “scapegoat” for the failures of the National Health Service, attributing the retention of ambulance stretchers in hospital emergency rooms to the unavailability of means for assistance, as in the case of Seixal.
2026 began with yet another controversy at INEM. This Thursday, the Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation into the case of the user who, after waiting almost three hours for INEM.
In a response sent to Lusa, the MP also indicates that he ordered a medico-legal autopsy to be carried out. Furthermore, the case is also being investigated by the General Inspectorate of Health Activities (IGAS).
The case occurred last Tuesday, when a 78-year-old man, from Aldeia de Paio Pires, in Seixal, district of Setúbal, called the National Institute of Medical Emergency (INEM) after a fall, a situation that was classified as priority 3, which implied a response within 60 minutes.
Lusa had access to the time tape of this case, which shows that the man called INEM for the first time at 11:20 am on Tuesday, with the medical vehicle only being sent at 2:09 pm, almost three hours later.
On Wednesday, to journalists, the president of INEM, Luís Cabraldismissed the institute’s responsibilities, insisting that 15 minutes later an attempt was made to activate a means for the location, but there were no ambulances available.
It could be the… stretchers’ fault
In a post published on Facebook, the INEM workers’ committee states that “the death of a citizen in Seixal, after waiting almost three hours for help, is a serious and politically unavoidable fact”.
A retention of stretchers in hospitalsbesides not being “new or exceptional”, it is “a structural problem that continues to take away resources from the street and destroying the response capacity of the Integrated Medical Emergency System”, already denounced both to parliament and to the Minister of Health.
“The Workers’ Committee has already taken a public position more than once on this issue. The problem has persisted, and the insistence on normalizing it has consequences. The point is simple and does not allow for excuses: the stretcher and the pre-hospital emergency means are not a “support resource” for blocking emergency rooms. When a stretcher is held up, the system loses immediate responsiveness, with calls waiting and times degrading.”, stated the INEM workers committee.
Representatives of workers at the medical emergency institute argue that both INEM and the Ministry of Health must guarantee that hospital units are not responsible for retaining emergency resources, guaranteeing that they have “their own capacity, procedures and resources to receive and transfer patients without trapping stretchers, ambulances and teams”.
The absence of these means, they add, “it is a serious failure of the system, with a direct impact on the safety of the population”.
“And there is a limit that must be stated clearly: INEM professionals and the Institute itself cannot continue to be the scapegoat of failures in the National Health Service that are completely unrelated to INEM. When the blockage is in the hospital circuit, the responsibility lies with the hospital circuit — and it must be assumed, corrected and prevented from happening again”, defended the workers’ committee.
In a statement regarding the same case, the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians questioned the adequacy of the resources allocated for assistance and the designated priority, which “raises doubts about compliance with best international practices”.
The association stated that the lack of an immediate response “compromised the safety of Seixal patients and put the triage and correct prioritization of other emergency calls at risk, affecting the efficiency of the SIEM [Sistema Integrado de Emergência Médica]”.
The situation of confusion and agitation in which the man who would later die found himself after the fall should have led to the activation of an emergency ambulance, accompanied by a medical emergency vehicle (VMER), according to the association.
“Even if, in an initial assessment, it was not considered a priority, when the worsening of the clinical condition was noted, an alternative means of pre-hospital response should have been activated, such as VMER, a medical emergency motorbike or, ultimately, a firefighting vehicle, ensuring presence at the scene, assessment and monitoring of the patient”, added the association.
The organization asks fixes to the SIEM, whose recent change was “poorly implemented”, as they argue, “and without adequate IT support, making operational management difficult and contributing to critical failures like this”.
