Pizarro: “We have too many patients in the ER, and for too long”

The Minister of Health, Manuel Pizarro, guaranteed this Wednesday that he was aware of the “problems and difficulties” that currently exist in the National Health Service (SNS).

“I do not hide, nor diminish, the problems and difficulties we have. But I must say that I am sure that the SNS will be here, as always, to respond to people’s needs”, noted Pizarro after chairing the Opening Session of the 1st Meeting ‘Pause for Mental Health – A Reflection on Higher Education ‘.

The official said, quoted by News by the Minutethat the government undertakes to “continue to work, together with professionals, specialists and the community, to generate a response that is organized, structured (…), which generates quality and safety for users and professionals”.

Asked about the complaints, which on Tuesday revealed that there are cases of lack of food at the Hospital de Santa Maria, in Lisbon, he said that he still has “very lateral knowledge about the situation”, but that this scenario will have happened “ in some cases of users who were in the emergency department”.

He recognized, therefore, that it is necessary to do “work in the emergency services of several hospitals in the country, first of all in Greater Lisbon, because there is an inconvenience (…) people have been fed outside the normal meal times”.

“This results from a basic problem: we have too many patients in the emergency room, and for too long. And it is upstream that we have to solve the problem”, he continued.

Pizarro also considered that, “in the emergency service, it is difficult to ask professionals to treat the issue of food as the highest priority of the users who are there. If the patients are at risk of dying (…), it is clear that this is the priority of the professionals”.

This “explains that, in one case or another, feeding may have been undesirably delayed beyond the normal period.” A problem that, he reinforced, only exists because the “patients remain too long in the emergency room”.

Regarding obstetric emergencies, he said: “if you ask me if I can guarantee that all maternity hospitals will be open, every day, I cannot guarantee that. Now, I can guarantee that people will always have an alternative, that this alternative will be clear and that it will allow every pregnant woman to organize herself”.