Government pulls out stops after three deaths attributed to delays in 112 response
With three deaths now linked to the chronic delays experienced by 112 emergency calls, INEM – the national institute for medical emergency – has announced a set of contingency measures “to optimise the functioning of the urgent patient guidance centres (CODU)”.
These measure include the creation of automatic triage for emergency calls left on hold for more than three minutes.
The solutions are set out in a statement released ahead of a press conference in which the National Institute for Medical Emergency will explain the strategy for improving 112 emergency response, now linked to the deaths of four people.
In the statement, INEM’s board of directors says it is going ahead with “the immediate implementation” of the various measures (a subsequent television report has stressed that this immediacy will not actually be immediate. “The contingency plan does not offer immediate measures”, said SIC Notícias this evening).
“The shortage of professionals in the category of Pre-Hospital Emergency Technician (TEPH) on INEM’s staff map, exacerbated now by the strike by workers in this professional category over overtime, with no end in sight, has occasionally conditioned the level of response that INEM intends to offer to citizens who need the Institute’s services,” it says, in what many will see as a stupifying understatement.
In addition to reinforcing the medical emergency system with rescue ambulances based in fire stations and branches of the Portuguese Red Cross, INEM is now focused on improvements to “activity of the TEPH on the CODU and emergency resources, to the detriment of non-priority activities”, writes Lusa.
“An abbreviated triage flow will also be developed and implemented for emergency calls that have had a waiting time of three minutes or more,” says the statement.
Alongside the contingency measures, INEM will, in the short term, integrate nurses into the CODU to carry out certain functions, and review procedures for passing on data from emergency teams in the field.
Another plan is to review triage flows of the CODU and SNS24 for transferring calls between these services.
As for the deaths, two were denounced by STEPH, the syndicate of pre-hospital emergency technicians over the weekend, the latest involves an elderly woman at an old people’s home in Castelo de Vide whose emergency call for an ambulance took almost an hour and a half; the patient died in hospital; the public prosecutor’s office is now investigating – and a woman in her 70s suffering a heart attack who was unable to be attended in time.
In the meantime, the government has expressed its willingness to talk to INEM technicians in order to improve their careers, and has also announced the extension of the deadline for contracting INEM helicopters.
At the press conference at the end of the Council of Ministers today, the Minister of the Presidency António Leitão Amaro explained that the renovation of the four current helicopters will be done through a call for tenders, with a contracting deadline between June 2025 and June 2030, with a total value of €98 million.
Source: LUSA
