The request is contained in a report sent to the country’s five regional health boards aimed at averting a shortage of doctors over the holiday period as was widely reported to have been the case over the festive period.
This order from the top also includes the possibility of using all means at the disposal of health services to minimise waiting periods at hospitals.
“Regional Health Administrations should verify where resources are available for the admittance of patients in the event of a greater need to do so, with the addition of all the capacities of public, social, private and military hospitals and health units”, the document, which was first sent to regional boards on 9 January, reads.
According to the Health State Secretary Francisco Leal da Costa, no hospitals “should experience a shortage of beds. We need to find out where the shortages are and buy these beds”.
Following this report, Health Minister Paulo Macedo came under criticism for considering the possibility of calling for help from private hospitals to assist the inundated national health services with the mass influx of patients.
Speaking on Wednesday evening, and following statements from the association of private hospitals that they had not been contacted in this regard, Paulo Macedo said there was an “almost zero percent” chance of this happening and was a last resort that would only be considered in a worst case scenario, which he stressed was far from being reached.
In the meantime, health authorities have also been ordered to visit senior care homes where people who have opted not to be vaccinated be visited by health care professionals to explain the advantages of the flu jab.
But while the Health Ministry has argued that the press has sensationalised news of deaths at A&E wards across the country in recent weeks, it emerged this week that there have been almost two thousand more deaths during the first three weeks of the year than had been expected by the authorities.
According to the National Health Board, this increase in the mortality rate is due to the fact that the “cold arrived sooner than expected and that more and more elderly people are arriving at A&E wards in an already deteriorated state of health”.
Earlier this week, the Lisbon-based Platform in Defence of the National Health Service handed in a letter to the Health Ministry, stating that Paulo Macedo is responsible for “the chaotic situation at A&E wards and the deaths there due to a lack of care”, and have called on him to resign.
State Secretary Fernando Leal da Costa has also since admitted that there are “no perfect systems” and said an inquiry had been launched to ascertain the reasons behind the recent and well-documented cases of patients dying at hospitals after waiting up to nine hours to be seen to by a doctor.
He further reasoned that the number of deaths this year is below those recorded in 2011 and 2012, and well below those seen in 1999, which was a year where mortality rates reached record highs.
The State Secretary further recalled this winter as being among the coldest on record, which has further exacerbated the number of people heading to hospitals.
In comments to Público, the chairman of the Nurses Council meanwhile said that it is commonplace for health services to be stretched this time of the year.
But Germano Couto warned that services are becoming increasingly strained year after year, a situation which he attributes to an ageing population.
“Things will only get worse if nothing is done” he said, and laid the blame for current difficulties squarely on the inability of social services and the Health Ministry to be better organised and improve the care of elderly citizens even before they arrive at hospitals.