More than 90% of Family Health Units (FHUs) reported a lack of basic material in the last year and around half believe they do not have adequate facilities for health professionals to carry out their activities.
A study by the National Association of Family Health Units (USF-AN), which will be presented this Friday, states that The figures relating to the shortage of basic material for FSU activity “continue to be high”, since 93.9% of the units registered these situations in the last year.
In 40.7% of the USF these absences were recorded more than 10 times, in 33.3% of the USF three to 10 times and in 19.8% one to two times.
Around half of the USF coordinators understand that their USF does not have adequate facilities to carry out professional health activities (43.8%)also assuming not having the physical possibility of carrying out differentiated circuits due to acute illness/scheduled consultation (68.8%), an increase compared to 2022/23 (67.6%).
For more than half (55%) the air conditioning systems are not adequate, achieving this year the worst result since the beginning of this study, which is in its 14th edition.
An issue that has become increasingly critical is the lack of material considered basic for the normal activity of a USF, the supply of which is now the responsibility of the Local Health Units (ULS).
The replacement of this material occurred on the same day and without “major delays” in just 3.4% of the FSU.
The study concludes that these data demonstrate the failure of the Primary Health Care delivery system, which did not improve with the ULS model.
Despite having recorded a decrease of around 10 percentage points in FSUs reporting material shortages more than 10 times a year (40.7% currently compared to 50.2% last year), only 6.1% It did not have any failures and the resolution time has increased (83.7% of USFs now report delays equal to or greater than 48 hours).
The document concludes that “The ULS model is failing in areas that its mentors claimed it would facilitate: increasing the agility of supply, improving equipment and technical support.”
Analyzing these results by the ULS, only in the Bajo Alentejo there was no shortage of material considered basic in any of the FSU that constitute it.
On the other hand, these absences occurred 10 or more times in the majority of USFs in ULS Algarve (80%), ULS Tâmega e Sousa (67.9%), ULS Região de Aveiro (65%), ULS Santo António (58 .3%), ULS São José (55.6%), ULS Lisboa Oeste (53.8%), ULS São João (52.2%) and ULS Amadora/Sintra (52.2%).
The study also points to a shortage of services at USF due to stockouts of clinical and non-clinical consumables.
Source: Observadora
