Yet another argument has broken out at Faro hospital as the Medical Council blamed local management for a lack of doctors.
Portugal’s Medical Council chairman says that quality of health care in orthopedics is at stake, pointing to a lack of doctors.
Dr Pedro Nunes (pictured) who runs the Hospitals of the Algarve group says these idiotic comments are from those who know full well the real situation in the Algarve and are scoring political points just before the general election.
Dr Nunes refuted the accusation, saying the comments come from idiots a month before the elections to raise well known problem areas which the administration cannot solve because it does not set doctors’ pay and conditions.
The lack of doctors was considered "very serious" by the chairman of the Medical Council, which accused the local management under Dr Nunes of an "unacceptable failure to maintain the quality of care in the orthopedic specialty at Faro hospital" and "is unable to respond in a timely manner to hospital patients awaiting surgery."
Dr Nunes says that "the conditions of employment, what you can pay and the conditions that can be offered, have not been set locally for four years but have been set by central government in dialogue with the Medical Council."
The Medical Council "certainly has a political intention a month before the elections" of trying to "hide and to divert attention from the recent effective restructuring of hospitals in the Algarve."
Council Chairman José Manuel Silva said that Dr Nunes’ administration has “mismanaged human resources and has failed to replace doctors who have left the hospital, leaving colleagues in an overloaded state, with "shifts of one or two doctors, when there should be four.”
Silva refused to agree that doctors did not want to work in the Algarve, that none respond to job ads and that many are going from the public to the private sector, or going to work abroad.
Dr Nunes said the lack of doctors in the Algarve is well known, but assured that health care has been provided thanks to the ‘tremendous effort’ of doctors in the Algarve and this should be recognised by the Medical Council.
"I would appreciate the help of the Council to encourage doctors to work in the Algarve instead of making idiotic comments, and I stress idiotic, about things they know perfectly well exist yet do not contribute to their solution," said Dr Nunes.
See also: http://www.algarvedailynews.com/news/5059-plan-to-lure-spanish-doctors-by-offering-a-50-pay-cut
