A new parliamentary committee for health has agreed to pay an urgent visit to the Algarve due to the poor situation of the region’s medical services.
"Hospital services in the Algarve are dire. Obviously we need to look as a top priority at the Hospitals of the Algarve where, despite the service delivery and professional pride of doctors and nurses, various services and specialties in Faro, Portimão and Lagos simply are not functioning," said MP Luís Graça, speaking for the Socialist MPs representing the Algarve region; António Eusébio, Fernando Anastácio and Ana Passos.
The agreement to act states that, after a collapse in surgery service, other specialties are experiencing "serious problems with very limited productivity capacity" such as gynaecology and obstetrics, anesthaesia, paediatrics and more recently Orthopaedics which last November saw emergency patients having to be transferred to the Hospital de Santa Maria in Lisbon.
The Hospitals of the Algarve's management is in "a situation that is likely to worsen with the announced resignation with effect from January of several orthopaedic doctors," said the Socialists.
"The Algarve has had a structural problem in recruiting health professionals, including doctors, but that has now been aggravated. The fact is, that today it can’t attract new doctors… due to the management style at the Hospitals of the Algarve advised Graça, for whom "it is important to hear about all of this from industry professionals and the region’s mayors."
The health commission will visit before Christmas and will meet the various health bodies and the relevant medical departments in order to "make a survey of the problems and ensure a thorough clarification of the causes of the drop in quality of medicine in the region, as well as ensure that measures are taken to correct this situation," said the committee.
The Hospitals of the Algarve is run by a Board of Directors chaired by Dr. Pedro Nunes whose brusque management style frequently has been criticised by the region's doctors, nursing staff and patient groups.
Doctors have threatened to strike and resign en masse on more than one occasion and the recruitment strategy to entice Spanish doctors to replace home grown ones failed to produce results.
Dr Nunes always retained the full support of the then Health Minister.
Dr Nunes' low point was when he referred to his staff as 'donkeys,' an insult that later was the subject of an investigation into his professionalism, or lack of it, by Portugal’s Medical Council.
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Also - do Portuguese hospitals have a separate management like in the UK or are the medical doctors also the managers of the facilities? How long before bribing a doctor to get an appointment and / or a treatment becomes the norm? And then paying extra in the chemists for the 'must have drugs'.