In an interview with TSF radio, Fernando Araújo said he was “concerned” with the situation, stressing that “patients’ interests must not be harmed” and promising “shortly, rules to define, with transparency and equity, the access of these users who come from the private sector.”
According to the secretary of state, all public hospitals are being presented with cases in which patients arrive from private hospitals in the middle of treatment for cancer and other serious illnesses, because they have reached the limit paid out by their insurance.
“We are concerned,” Araújo said, adding, “we have been monitoring [the situation] through the regulator, which has very specific responsibilities here, and we must also discuss it with the Order of Doctors because on the part of doctors as well ... we have to understand what information is given to patients in some private [hospitals] and the degree of commitment that is taken on [by the hospital], so as to understand whether the doctor-patient relationship is being brought into question.”
However he emphasised that “the patient’s interests must not be harmed.”
On the issue of private patients being seen to jump the queue for public healthcare, Araújo said that patients “have priority within the level of treatment and within the time they need for the different stages” and that this must be done “with fairness, but above all with enormous transparency” and that jumping the queue is bad for all concerned.
“It harms us all, starting with the patient who may have been ill informed about the start of treatment, who had the impression that they would have a full treatment in a certain healthcare institution and they get halfway and are informed that they cannot continue there and have to go to another doctor, another institution. In the case of diseases such as cancer, the impact of that information at times is dramatic.”