“The increase in waiting lists for surgeries as well as requests for uncompleted first consultations, reveal an inability to reverse the saturation trajectory of the National Health Service”, warns a CFP report released today.

According to the document on the performance of the SNS in 2023, the number of users on the waiting list for the first consultation “increased significantly in 2023”.

The increase in the number of first hospital consultations carried out in 2023 (156 thousand more compared to 2022) was not enough to meet the growing demand (263 thousand more requests), which resulted in an increase in the waiting list that year, indicates the report.

The response capacity of surgical activity “deteriorated again in 2023”, warns the CFP, which indicates that the number of users on the Surgery Registration List (LIC) continued to increase to 265 thousand, compared to 235 thousand in 2022, despite the growth in the number of operations carried out in 2022 (714 thousand), which represented a growth of 6.1%.

“In this context, there was a worsening in the average waiting time for those undergoing surgery (3.1 months compared to 2.9 months in 2022)”, he says.

As for the various areas of the RNCCI, despite the increase of 317 places, the number of inpatient beds decreased slightly.

As of 2022, the growth of the network resulted from the increase in home responses, with 6,024 places in Integrated Continuing Care Teams, compared to 5,690 places in 2022.

Responses aimed at institutionalizing users decreased this year, going from 9,783 inpatient beds in 2022 to 9,766 beds in 2023, “reinforcing the downward movement already observed in 2022”.

The document also warns that “important asymmetries in the supply” of the RNCCI in Portugal still persist, with the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region showing the lowest response capacity.

The number of users on the RNCCI waiting list in 2023 continued to increase compared to the previous year, standing at 1,804, a 15% growth that resulted from the larger waiting list for inpatient units.

The report also states that it was only in 2023 that it was possible to return to the level of monitoring of chronic patients at the rate recorded in 2019.

After the drop in the monitoring of chronic patients and screening programs for cancer patients recorded in 2020 due to the pandemic, these indicators began a recovery trajectory, which only reached adherence rates recorded in the pre-pandemic period in 2023 in case of chronically ill patients and in cervical cancer screening, highlights the report.