"We have a healthcare system that is very focused on acute illness and emergencies and poorly organised in terms of the needs of chronic patients, who are the biggest consumers of the system's resources", the platform's president lamented to Lusa news agency on National Healthcare User Day.

After emphasising that the issue of access to healthcare "is common to all users", Jaime Melancia added that this concern of chronic patients had already been expressed to the new minister, Ana Paula Martins, in a meeting that took place last week.

The president of the platform, which brings together around 70 associations that defend chronic patients and healthcare professionals, stressed that, in practice, he wants "access to be easier and to allow people to have access to diagnoses and treatments in a timely and appropriate manner".

"We cannot forget that the patient's quality of life will have a return for society", Jaime Melancia highlighted, pointing to the examples of increased productivity and reduced absenteeism.

On National Healthcare User Day, the president of Saúde em Diálogo, created in 1998 and with the status of a Private Social Solidarity Institution (IPSS), considered that another concern, also already conveyed to the minister, is to ensure that hospitals "do not create obstacles" to the law that provides for the dispensing of hospital medicines in pharmacies.

"Many patients in this country have to go to large hospitals to be treated. There are already these enormous travel costs and they also have to come to the large centres to collect their medication, when it is for hospital dispensing", warned Jaime Melancia, for whom it is necessary that "no more obstacles are created for patients to be treated on time and close to home".

To Lusa, the platform's president also defended the creation of the Chronic Patient Statute, to allow for "the due attention" to be given to these users, and considered that the lack of family doctors in some regions of the country harms their clinical follow-up.

"Many chronic patients, after being treated in a hospital by a specialist in diagnosis and initial treatments, should be followed by a family doctor, without having to go to hospitals", he argued.

Jaime Melancia also said he hopes that the recently created Local Health Units will be maintained, and considered it to be "a consensus" that the executive director of the NHS, who submitted his resignation to Ana Paula Martins, "was doing a good job".

The platform was working with Fernando Araújo on the healthcare humanisation commission, arguing that, despite his departure from the executive board, the "part of involving patients in decisions and not just as mere users of the system" should be maintained.

"We are the ones who know how to deal with our illness", stressed Jaime Melancia, for whom users are "very little involved" in the day-to-day decisions of the various health organisations.

At the end of 2022, the NHS had over 10.5 million registered users.

According to data from the NHS transparency portal, 10,333,07 users were registered in primary healthcare (health centres) at the end of March, 163,963 thousand fewer than at the beginning of the year.

In January, 1,647,700 users did not have a family doctor assigned, a number that dropped to 1,539,222 last month.

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