The Administrative Court of Loulé has upheld an injunction filed last September by Isilda Gomes and others to prevent the "extinction of emergency surgical skills in Portimão Hospital and the transfer of such skills to Faro Hospital.”
This ruling means in practice that the actions taken so far by the Ministry of Health and the Board of Directors of the Algarve Hospitals Group, in particular relating to the transfer of staff and services from Portimão, are halted.
The injunction was filed just before the 2013 council elections by a group of citizens connected to the socialist party in Portimão, including Gomes who later was elected as mayor.
Gomes explained that the court process was aimed at preventing the end to emergency surgical specialties in Portimão Hospital and the transfer of skills to Faro Hospital, as contained in the plan for the Algarve’s health service which has government approval and which was being carried out by Dr Pedro Nunes.
The transfer of doctors and nurses from Portimão hospital to Faro legally should now end and in theory the termination of some emergency treatment in Portimão will have to be reversed. This situation is a mess as already stretched staff and a migration of personnel to the private sector leaves any idea of 'back to the way it was' an unrealistic objective.
Dr Pedro Nunes, the president of the Board of Directors of the Hospital of the Algarve Group (CHA) has said he will accept the court's decision but wonders about the reversal of the government approved reorganisation of healthcare in the Algarve which he has doggedly been executing, impervious to complaints and charges of unprofessional conduct.
Since July 2013, when the Hospitals of the Algarve Group was created by the merger of Faro, Portimão and Lagos hospitals, much has been achieved in the necessarily unpopular financial and structural reorganisation and Dr Nunes, with the full backing of Health Minister, Macedo, has followed the plan to the letter.
The court did not agree that the reorganisation plan was a sensible or rational one when viewed from the patients’ viewpoint, rather than from the viewpoint of cost-savings, which has been the driving force and which has seen Nunes at loggerheads with upset doctors and healthcare user groups while overseeing an empire characterised by lack of doctors, increased waiting times and a frequent lack of drugs and materials.
Today’s court decision dismissed the arguments put forward by Dr Nunes, i.e that the reorganisational measures were intended to save resources, and based on the evidence presented at trial, the court disagreed that Nunes’ actions saved any money at all, adding that ‘these measures have not led to an adequate, effective, efficient and rational management of resources. On the contrary, from the documents and the facts presented in court, it is clear that the provision of speedy and convenient ways for users to access public healthcare … has been damaged.’
The defendants, the Hospital Regional Centre of the Algarve, the Ministry of Health and the Health Administration of the Algarve, may appeal the decision.
Mayor Gomes stressed today that the court decision more than proves that the health of Portimão’s residents and tourists was indeed at risk, “a situation which we could not condone” as this is a tourist region par excellence and we know that when today's tourists choose holiday location they do so with an eye on healthcare provision.
"We will continue this fight until the original conditions in the Barlavento hospital are restored," concluded Gomes.
