SNS focused on acute illness and emergencies makes access difficult for chronically ill patients – Current Affairs

“We have a health system that is very focused on acute illness and urgency and is poorly organized in terms of the needs of chronically ill patients, who are the biggest consumers of the system’s resources,” the platform’s president, lamented to the Lusa agency, on National Health User Day.

After highlighting that the issue of access to healthcare “is transversal to all users”, Jaime Melancia added that this concern of chronically ill people has already been expressed to the new minister Ana Paula Martins, in a meeting that took place last week.

The president of the platform, which brings together around 70 associations defending chronically ill people and health professionals, highlighted that, in practice, he wants “access to be easier and to allow people to have access to diagnoses and health treatments.” in an appropriate manner and on time”.

“We cannot forget that the patient’s quality of life will return to society”, highlighted Jaime Melancia, pointing out examples of increased productivity and reduced absenteeism.

On National User Day, the president of Saúde em Diálogo, created in 1998 and with IPSS status, considered that another of the concerns, also already transmitted to the minister, involves ensuring that hospitals “do not create obstacles” to the law that provides for dispensing of hospital medicines in pharmacies.

“Many patients in this country have to go to large hospitals to be treated. There are already these enormous travel costs and they still have to come to large centers to collect their medications, when they are dispensed from hospitals”, warned Jaime Melancia, for whom it is necessary that now “no more obstacles are created for patients to be treated at time and hours” in close proximity.

Speaking to Lusa, the platform’s president also defended the creation of the Chronic Ill Statute, to allow “due attention” to be given to these users, and considered that the lack of family doctors in some regions of the country harms their clinical monitoring.

“Many chronically ill patients, after having been treated in a hospital by a specialist in diagnosis and initial treatments, should be followed up by a family doctor, without having to resort to hospitals”, he argued.

Jaime Melancia also said he hoped that the recently created Local Health Units would be maintained, and considered it “consensual” that the executive director of the SNS, who submitted his resignation to Ana Paula Martins, “was doing a good job”.

The platform was working with Fernando Araújo on the care humanization committee, arguing that, despite his departure from executive management, the “part of involving patients in decisions and not just as mere users of the system” must be maintained.

“We are the ones who know how to deal with our disease”, highlighted Jaime Melancia, for whom users, in the day-to-day decisions of the various health organizations, are “very little involved”.

At the end of 2022, the SNS had more than 10.5 million registered users.

According to data from the SNS transparency portal, 10,333,07 users were registered in primary healthcare (health centers) at the end of March, 163,963 thousand fewer than at the beginning of the year.

In January, 1,647,700 users did not have a family doctor assigned, a number that dropped to 1,539,222 last month.