The date has been chosen for the meeting between amMinister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, and the doctors on duty. It will be on November 27th, confirmed Expresso, and is scheduled for 10 am at the headquarters of the Ministry of Healthin Lisbon. According to what had advanced CNN Portugalthe governor chose this date to meet with the recently created Association of Service Providers. Also the Chairman of the Order of Doctors said he intends to meet with working doctors to hear their demands and perspectives.
In the middle of the week, Ana Paula Martins announced that the Ministry of Health was trying find a day to meet – “as soon as possible” – with the doctors on duty, after they have requested a meeting with the minister to discuss the decree-law on the regulation of their work.
Aproven by the Government at the end of October, the Legislation aims to regulate the amounts paid to doctors providing services and provides for a regime of incompatibilities. In this way, the Executive wants to minimize the differences paid between doctors who have a contract with the SNS and doctors who work as service providers, the majority of whom are hired on a temporary basis by hospitals to provide emergencies.
“Regarding doctors who work on a service provision basis, who are building or have already built an association, they have already asked us for a meeting and we are looking at the Ministry of Health’s agendas for the date for this meeting to take place as soon as possible”, Ana Paula Martins told journalists on the sidelines of the National Health Convention, which took place in Lisbon. Just like theExpresso reported, doctors providing services in public units Last Tuesday, they formed the Association of Doctors Providers of Services following this new regulation.
On Thursday, the movement of doctors providing services said in a statement that it requested the Ministry of Health for a meeting to evaluate the decree-law, to discuss the situation, in an attempt to understand “the measures it intends to implement and give its vision of the field, on whether or not they are applicable”. Not communicated, The movement has, for now, rejected the possibility of a general shutdown of emergency services, claiming that it first wants to know the Government’s diploma.
In her intervention at the CNS, the minister stated that “the defense of health and the truths about how to better manage it are not exclusive to any party, any professional group or any ‘lobby’ of interests”.
“The Ministry of Health will dialogue, like all those who do good, we are open to dialogue, we will never stop being, but we will also never do so due to media pressure or any group, or the pressure of any group, more or less organized, or at the whim of those who live by words and have no responsibility for others”, he assured.
Asked if she was referring to doctors providing services, the minister said no, clarifying that she was referring to “any type of pressure that may exist” and, she said, “there are many, always”. “We make politics with planning and not politics on impulse”, he stressed. In her speech, the government official also highlighted that the Government will not deviate “even one millimeter from the path” it is following.