Government says 40% of emergency in public hospitals are false – Daily News – Lisbon

Hospitals National Health Service attended in 2014, more than six million emergency room, but in 40.8% of cases patients received – in screening Manchester – green, blue or white wristbands. This means that these people could have been treated elsewhere, notably in the health center, since they were not concerned really urgent problems. The figures are part of the Annual Report on Access to Health Care in the NHS Institutions and Entities agreed in 2014, which was sent to Parliament, and that the Público newspaper had access.

Still thus false emergency calls dropped from 42% in 2013 to 40.8% in 2014, a year that was marked by “chaos” in hospitals caused by the influenza outbreak. The number of contacts for the Health Line 24 grew in 2014: over 34% of users were “referred to a hospital emergency department,” but “over 50%” of those linked with the intention of addressing the hospital were ” referred to primary health care (31.3%) or self-care (24.7). “

With regard to health centers, the report also indicates that more people attended in 2014, but 1478 .271 users remain without family doctor, says. Given this number, although the document refer to the previous year, the Ministry of Health points out that in the first half of 2015 has already been possible to reduce the number of uninsured GP users to 1.2 million.

In hospitals, there were more consultations, totaling 11.8 million, representing an increase of 1.6% over the previous year. The waiting time for the first consultation also had a slight improvement, but still set up in 115 days. By region, the waiting time is longer in the Algarve – 161 days – and the Alentejo is the fastest, with 105 days; 26% of queries are made out of the maximum response time enrolled in the law. If we analyze only the very priority and priority consultations, the figure rises to 30%.