João Queiroz
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Between July and December of last year, complaints from private hospital users, mostly beneficiaries of ADSE, reached the Health Regulatory Authority (ERS), who were denied access to consultations or tests because they had old debts with those hospital units.
These cases were the subject of seven deliberations by ERS, published this Monday, along with dozens of others concluded in the second half of 2020. With the exception of one occurrence, the Regulator concluded that the providers adopted a procedure that “is not in line with “with the obligations they have towards ADSE, nor with the norms assumed before the National Health Service.
“Such a procedure constitutes, on the one hand, in the provider’s relationship with the public financing entity, a contractual breach and, on the other hand, in the relationship with the beneficiary user, a violation of the right of access to the provision of health care”, he argues.
Thus, ERS issued an order to the health establishments concerned to “immediately cease the application of the internal procedure for suspending health services when access to healthcare services by users benefiting from public subsystems is at stake. health or equivalent, and the issuing of an instruction “.
The Regulator recalls that hospitals must “guarantee the users’ right of access to the provision of health care whenever it has in its genesis a convention contract signed by the provider with the NHS, with ADSE, or with any other public health subsystem. health or equivalent “. They must also “respect the terms of the convention contracts” that have been concluded.
The only case in which ERS considered that the conduct and provider was “within the scope of the current legislation” referred to a user whose debt had already been “judicially recognized”.
During that period, ERS also deliberated on eight complaints regarding non-compliance with DGS guidelines in the context of the pandemic, concluding that the measures “in terms of prevention, control and surveillance of infection” of the health units concerned “suffer from constraints. likely to affect the legitimate rights and interests of users, in particular the right to provide adequate, quality and safe health care “.
ERS also detected irregularities in the procedures of seven health units in the inter-hospital transfer, after receiving complaints from patients or family members who were not previously informed about that change. And, therefore, it realizes the need to adopt “increased regulatory intervention” in order to guarantee that users are guaranteed “the right to follow-up”, “informing them in a timely and detailed manner about the patient’s clinical situation and the consequent need for their transfer. to another hospital unit “.
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