The Left Bloc considers that the possibility of the Sintra Proximity Hospital integrating a new Cascais-Sintra Local Health Unit (ULS), instead of the Amadora-Sintra ULS, “will call into question” the public management of the new hospital unit.
According to a statement from the Sintra municipality of BE, the State Budget proposal for 2025 (OE2025) foresees that the Sintra Proximity Hospital will be part of the new Cascais-Sintra ULS and not, as previously planned, of the Amadora ULS -Sintra.
“Given that the end of the Cascais Hospital public-private partnership is not expected, the option of The creation of this new ULS will not only open the doors of ULS management to the private sector, but will also call into question its public nature. of the management of the new Sintra hospital,” the blockaders warned, adding that the new equipment “will depend on the private management of the Cascais unit” and “on the primary care network of the two municipalities.”
In the report of the OE2025 proposal, delivered to parliament, it is stated that “the Government’s ambition, for the municipalities of Cascais and Sintra, is to create a Local Health Unit that responds to the local needs” of the two municipalities, “reorganizing the provision of care, bringing care closer to the population and integrating the new response that now exists in the Sintra Proximity Hospital.”
BE’s decision is based “in an ideological prejudice about the supposed benefits of the presence of individuals in the National Health Service [SNS] and that will contribute to its dismantling.”
“We are faced with an option that disappoints the expectations of the population and that constitutes unjustified favoritism to the interests of the owners of the Cascais hospital.”which will see the response capacity of its unit expanded at the expense of public money invested by the municipality in the facilities and by the Ministry of Health in the equipment,” the note reads.
The new hospital unit, BE highlighted, was built “with the aim of improving the population’s access to health care.”in a municipality where more than a third of the population does not have an assigned family doctor.”
Designed as a unit “in conjunction with the overcrowded Hospital Prof. DoctorFernando Fonseca [Amadora-Sintra]which serves a population of more than half a million users”, the new unit, financed by the municipality with around 50 million euros, will be equipped by the Ministry of Health (with a budget allocation of 22 million) and Amadora-Sintra . They will also invest “time and human and technical resources in this process,” the blockers point out.
The Cascais Hospital is managed in public-private collaboration (PPP) with the Spanish group Ribera Salud, SA, renovated in 2020, until 2031, and, according to BE, was “reinforced in September 2024 in the field of Emergency and Transformation in Health”.
“By integrating the Sintra hospital into a new ULS Cascais-Sintra, the Government will hand over the investment in construction to the private entity and equipment of this hospital, in a true assault on the public coffers,” accused the BE, for whom it is “another blow to dismantle” the SNS, “transferring its capacity to private entities free of charge.”
The municipality of Sintra transferred the surface rights of the future Sintra hospital to the ULS Amadora-Sintra on June 29, marking the beginning of the handover of the building to the SNS.
The equipment began construction in 2021 and is still in the final stages of construction, but the president of the municipality of Sintra, Basílio Horta (PS), hoped that it could come into operation from October.
The municipality signed a contract with the ULS Amadora-Sintra to establish the right of surface of the building, in Casal da Cavaleira, parish of Algueirão-Mem Martins, with a covered area of 10,500 square meters and an uncovered area of 49,000 m2.
According to the draft of the contract to which Lusa had access, the surface right is for 50 years, extendable for another 25, and the ULS undertakes to cover the expenses of “installation and operation of the Sintra hospital”, that is, those of “equipment and technical means”. .
In a note, the Sintra City Council, in the Lisbon district, stated that it invested around 49 million euros in the construction of the new hospital, to serve 400 thousand users, and that “it is up to the central State to allocate equipment and human resources “.
The new hospital will have an outpatient service, consultations and external examinations, a mental health unit, physical rehabilitation medicine, a collection center and complementary diagnostic and therapeutic means, it will also have an outpatient surgery unit with a surgery and recovery block, basic emergencies . service for nearly 60 thousand emergencies – about half of those carried out in Amadora-Sintra –, convalescence unit, pharmacy, sterilization unit and also a teaching and training space.
An official source from the Sintra City Council told Lusa that Basílio Horta asked the Minister of Health for a meeting about the hospital, after a previous request in May, without a response, before taking a position on a possible ‘privatization’ of the new facilities.
Source: Observadora
