will become a end of the year of great tension for those responsible for Hospital of the Armed Forces (HFAR) and General Staff of the Armed Forces (EMGFA)🇧🇷
For the first time, they run the risk of having to drastically reduce the services provided it is from transfer several dozen patients for hospitals of the National Health Service (SNS) due to a lack of professionals to guarantee the activity in different sectors of the establishment, both in Lisbon and in Porto.
At issue is the renting more than 200 technical assistants, diagnostic technical operational assistants on a contract basis and whose contracts, essential to make up for the serious shortage of human resources, were rejected by the government.
The process should be completed by the end of the year, but given the situation, HFAR management already has a Emergency plandescribing all the operational consequences of the absence of these professionals, who have already been told that their contract should not be renewed.
Among other things, the direct impact, from the beginning of 2023, varies from the closure of 68 hospital bedsin Lisbon and Porto, with a drastic reduction in intensive care capacity🇧🇷 The suspension of approximately 20,000 consultations and 200 operations🇧🇷 decrease in 50% of all administrative activity (patient care, consultation appointments, etc.); closure of clinical valences and waiting list increase of the sick; also reaches the maintenance areas hospital equipment, energy, water distribution, as of hemodialysistoilets and food.
This is in addition to many other actions in which HFAR has innovated, opened up to civil society, with collaboration protocols with medical schools, for training, with sports clubs, for the development of skills in sports medicine, with other hospitals, for hospitalization of patients in continuous care.
It’s huge what’s going on. After everything the armed forces and in particular the HFAR have done in support of the SNS during the pandemic and continue to do
“What is happening is huge. After everything the Armed Forces and in particular the HFAR have done to support the SNS during the pandemic and what they are still doing, taking in patients from other hospitals and hundreds of non-military patients, it is a big punch in the stomach”, the DN assumed a high military rank that supervised the process.
Severe staff shortage
The situation has been known since last September when, as in previous years, it was presented Directorate-General for Administration and Public Employment (DGAEP) asked to employ three and a half hundred doctors and nurses for the HFAR hubs in Lisbon and Porto in addition to these professionals.
HFAR officials were surprised with a rejection letterwhich was repeated successively during the months of October and November at various insistences.
HFAR leadership and senior Military Health officials, dependent on EMGFA, warned the office of the Minister of National Defense and the office of the Secretary of State about what was going on, but neither Helena Carreiras nor Marco Capitão Ferreira managed to change the decision, unless on the last day December 13thwhatever authorized the hiring of about a hundred doctors, nurses and pharmacists, but only in Lisbon.
As the countdown comes to an end, official source of the Ministry of National Defense (MDN)confronted by the dramatic scenario by the DN, emphasizes that “the contracts related to the processes of medical and nursing personnel have already been authorized” and that “otherwise the government area of National Defense is together with the other competent government areas, in cooperation with the HFAR Board and the EMGFA, make every effort to approve the remaining processes”.
The MDN is always informed at the beginning of the year that the HFAR is a structural deficiency in its organic framework and that no government has decided: of the predicted and necessary 926 soldiers, there is a shortage of 473; of the 754 civilians missing, 169 – a total shortfall of 652 troops.
“Authorization and budget reinforcement has been requested repeatedly for the admission of at least 160 people to the workforce, through a public tender, but unfortunately there has been no development. .
This staff shortage has been partly compensated by the hiring of the above service providers, a total of 350, which happened in 2022, plus the hiring of some companies.
The amount of budget costs for the members is just over five million eurosfrom a global HFAR budget of about 31 million euros (14 million from the state budget and about 17 million from own revenue).
In 2021 more than HFAR 280,000 consultations, 4,436 surgeries, attended for approximately 18,000 emergencies and performed more than a million actions related to complementary means of diagnosis and therapy.
Source: DN
