“The Ministry is evaluating the process of the new hospital in the West and all the procedural documents that were transmitted to it from the previous government”, said the authority in response to the Lusa agency.

The Ministry of Health assured that “the Government views this project as very relevant for the entire region and will give it all the priority it deserves”.

Last week all parliamentary groups claimed the urgency of building the new hospital in the region and questioned the government whether or not it should maintain the previous decisions, with PAN, BE and PS going further by arguing that it should not back down and that must follow up on what has already been done.

In this session, draft resolutions from PAN and BE recommending that the Government maintain previous decisions and move forward with a restructuring plan for current hospitals were generally approved and sent to the health commission to be assessed in the specialty.

Another draft resolution from the PCP calling for the construction of the new hospital was also approved.

Parliament also considered two petitions, one defending the location in Caldas da Rainha and the other demanding that the validity of the ongoing process be recognised.

The construction of the new hospital in the West is one of the pieces of equipment in the design phase in the health sector that appears in the 'Transition Brief' delivered by the government led by António Costa to the current prime minister, Luís Montenegro.

According to the document, to which Lusa had access, the assistance profile and location were approved in June 2023, “with the financing model being studied”, which was delivered to the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in February this year.

The care profile points to a hospital with 467 beds, of which 381 are for general hospitalization, 74 outpatient consultation offices, 17 chronic dialysis stations, a multipurpose day hospital, and pediatrics, oncology, and mental health specialties.

An operating room with 10 rooms is planned, four of which are dedicated to outpatient clinics and three for emergencies and maternity with nine delivery and neonatology rooms with nine cots and six incubators.

The new hospital will have 16 medical specialties, three of which do not exist in the current hospitals of the Western Local Health Unit (ULS) - endocrinology, nephrology, and rheumatology.

With regard to surgical specialties, it maintains the six existing ones.

The four existing Diagnostic and Therapeutic specialties should increase to five, with the inclusion of Pathological Anatomy.

The document also suggests the creation of a technological and biomedical center to support outpatient and inpatient care, with laboratories for Clinical Pathology, Pathological Anatomy, Immunohemotherapy, and Imaging.

According to the document, the new hospital should cover the area of influence of Caldas da Rainha, Óbidos, Peniche, Bombarral, Torres Vedras, Cadaval, Lourinhã, and part of Mafra, excluding the parishes in the municipalities of Alcobaça and Mafra, currently served, and the municipality of Nazaré.

The document served as the basis for the decision to build the future hospital in Bombarral, on a 54-hectare plot of land, considering its centrality in relation to the municipalities it will serve and the size of the land that allows the expansion of the new unit, if this were to be the case in the future.

The choice of Bombarral was based on accessibility criteria, such as its proximity to exit 11 of Highway 8 (which crosses the entire West) and the railway station.

The new hospital should replace the current units of Caldas da Rainha, Torres Vedras, and Peniche of the Local Health Unit of the West, which serve 300,000 inhabitants of the municipalities of Caldas da Rainha, Óbidos, Peniche, Bombarral, Torres Vedras, Cadaval and Lourinhã and part of the municipalities of Alcobaça and Mafra.