The Liberal Initiative questioned the Minister of Health about the changes in the SNS Transparency Portal, accusing the Government of having made them “without any justification” and hindering “access to information” of public interest.
In a question addressed through the Assembly of the Republic to the Minister of Health, Marta Temido, the Parliamentary Group of Liberal Initiative (IL) considers that “the crisis of the National Health Service (SNS) leads to its reform and the introduction Changes to ensure universal and effective access to health care are now a national priority.”
“It is also essential to know how the SNS has really worked, what problems have arisen, where they have arisen and what their origin is. And there are unexplained facts, such as, increased mortality“, reads the text, which dates from Tuesday, and which was signed by the eight IL deputies.
Noting that “the Government promoted a set of changes in the SNS Transparency Portal, in the Hospital Morbidity and Mortality database”, the IL Parliamentary Group considers that these changes “difficult its use, create discontinuities and decrease data handling capacity”.
The deputies accuse the executive of having introduced these changes “without prior public announcement and without any justification.”
“IL considers that the Government should clarify the reason for the changes introduced and why they were not accompanied by an explanation, as well as the reason why access to information on Crucial issues for debate and public scrutinyespecially at this time of intense debate about the future of the SNS”, adds the text.
For IL, the data in question “are of public interest and should not go back in making them available, either for the scrutiny of public policies or for the use of citizens or the scientific community.”
In this sense, in addition to requesting the replacement of the database, the deputies asked Marta Temido what “led the Government to start collecting quarterly data, and not monthly as before”, but also why the Executive no longer shows ” .absolute data, going only to current rates and ratios”.
The deputies also question the Government about the reason that led it to “divide the original database into three databases (gender, age group and institution), thus hindering the comparisons that were possible with the database, aggregated, original”.
The Liberal Initiative also wants to know why the changes were not “pre-announced and subject to public consultation” and, since they were justified under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), “to what extent the GDPR was not being fulfilledpreviously, on the available information.
“Finally, why did the Government decide to introduce changes that make it difficult to access SNS information, at this time, when there is a clear situation of rupture and when the debate about the future of the SNS is urgent?”, they point out. ask Even the deputies.
Source: Observadora
