According to the National Index of Access to Hospital Medicines 2023, promoted by the Portuguese Association of Hospital Administrators (APAH), 77% of hospitals consider stock shortages to be a serious problem, of which 27% consider that the problem only affects generics.

According to the study, which is released today at the Medicine Forum, in Lisbon, 68% of the hospital institutions surveyed have a record of ruptures, but only 50% record the solutions found to mitigate them.

Speaking to the Lusa agency, the president of APAH, Xavier Barreto, said that disruptions and the use of medicines based on results are “the two least positive dimensions” that contribute to the result of the Global Index of Access to Medicines for 2022 located at 58% when in 2020 it was 66% and 77% in 2018.

According to the official, these disruptions are not due to a lack of funding for hospitals, explaining that they are often due to “a difficulty in the market in supplying hospitals and health units in general”.

This situation worries hospitals, “which have to continually resolve these disruptions when they should be concerned with developing faster and even more efficient creation processes”, but “in practically all cases, the patient is not left without a response”.