The OE’s statement comes at a time when a number of elderly people are known to have died while waiting to see a doctor in hospital A&E units.
Eight people, among them at least three aged over 80, have died waiting in A&E wards since the beginning of this year.
“The Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Social Security must reach an understanding with regards to nursing homes” the head of the Nurses Register, Germano Couto said earlier this week, backing up his affirmation by adding: “often the deaths occur not because of the hospital but because the patients did not get the care needed in the lead up” to their hospitalisation.
The OE has criticised a lack of resources available to nursing homes.
Alluding to the “unusual number” of deaths that have occurred in emergency units in a number Portuguese hospitals in recent weeks, the head of the OE said in his opinion they were not only due to a shortage of human or structural resources in hospitals, but were also due to inadequacies in nursing homes and primary health care.
Of the approximately 3,000 nursing homes in Portugal “the majority do not have health care, or doctors, or nurses”, which, when added to “the many abandoned elderly people”, makes hospitals a “last resort for people who do not have social support”, Germano Couto said, stressing it should be the frontline of primary health care that covers that base.
His views were expressed during a visit to a hospital in Caldas da Rainha where the OE president said he saw a “certain type of installed chaos”, with around 20 hospital beds positioned in working corridors “which means care cannot be given with the safety and quality required.”
“The vast majority [of the patients] are aged over 70, 75, or 80” which underlines a need for “earlier intervention”, even though the Caldas da Rainha Hospital is one of the hospitals in which “the Health Ministry must improve its structural conditions” as it is not “prepared for the population it covers.”
According to the OF that particular hospital has a deficit of around “70 nurses” to comply with quality-service ratios, and needs another “seven nurses” in its A&E unit alone.
Mr Couto believes the country is currently going through a “predictable situation” given that “every year in winter there is an abnormal flux of patients to emergency wards” and that the government needs to plan ahead instead of “merely making contingency plans at the time.”
Meanwhile, on Wednesday this week, an arts and crafts group stretched out a 40-metre-long crafted blanket in front of parliament to raise awareness about the rights of the elderly as well as about the mistreatment the elderly suffer. The group is also hoping that their huge blanket will make it into the Guinness World Book of Records. Made up of 1225 individual squares crafted by elderly people from 70 different institutions, the organisation behind the idea hopes it will also encourage the government to promote protection committees for the elderly.