The minister took responsibility for “everything that fails” at the hearing in the Health Commission, announced that the new SNS statute will be approved next week and said she hopes to resolve some difficulties with direct hiring of doctors.
The health minister assumed this Wednesday that “everything that fails” in the National Health Service “is the minister’s political responsibility,” apologizing for that, but recalling that she should leave better conditions than those she found.
“I don’t know what part of it they still don’t understand of my total responsibility and feeling of responsibility for everything that fails in the SNS, from the phone calls that are left to make, to the toilets that are not working, to the air conditioners that don’t work, to the people who are waiting, to the contacts that are left, sometimes rude in the contact, the absence of lines,” said Marta Temido in the Health Commission.
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Marta Temido was responding to criticism from opposition MPs about the management of the National Health Service (SNS), the departure of specialists, the closure of obstetrics and gynecology emergency services, the lack of family doctors and the lack of human resources in hospitals.
“I don’t know which part they haven’t realized yet that the responsibility is always and totally mine, and it’s the part, obviously, for which I apologize,” he insisted.
“But more than apologizing, I have the political responsibility to leave to other ministers of health a better context and better conditions and that is done with reforms, it is done with measures, it is done with policies and I truly believe that the executive direction of the SNS is not an extra place,” Marta Temido stressed.
The minister maintained that the executive direction of the SNS “will be an extraordinarily difficult and heavy place and a place that will allow the responses of services to work more integrated and there is a greater vision of the whole”.
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“I think it is clear why we need an executive board of the SNS,” which will be responsible, without prejudice to the autonomy of the entities, to coordinate the welfare response of the units that make up the SNS, ensure network operation and proceed to its evaluation.
Regarding the lack of human resources, Marta Temido recalled the increase in the number of professionals. In 2015, when the legislature began, the SNS had 119,000 health professionals, today it has about 151,000.
