Health Systems in Transition

Health systems in transition

Portugal

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In terms of patient safety, in 2013, the crude rate of foreign body left

during surgical procedure per 100 000 hospitalizations (considering surgery-

related episodes) was 5.2, lower than the United Kingdom (7.1). The rate for

postoperative pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis was lower (218.9)

than in France (705.6) and the United Kingdom (1366). In terms of the

postsurgical complication of sepsis, the rate in Portugal (1154.2) was lower

than in the United Kingdom (1522.4), but the difference was smaller than for

previous indicators (OECD, 2016b).

7.7 Transparency and accountability

Public participation and patient empowerment are major health care goals

inscribed in key legal documents across the last two decades in Portugal, but

with little practical impact. However, two recent government decisions seem

to emphasize those goals: the creation of the National Health Council (legally

established for more than 25 years but never put to work) and the launch of the

NHS portal

The National Health Council (

Conselho Nacional de Saúde

) is an independent

consultative body for the Ministry of Health, composed by 30 members, and

aims to ensure NHS users participation in the policy-making process and

promote the system’s transparency and accountability to the society. Most

of all, the National Health Council seeks a broad consensus regarding health

policies, including members from municipalities, health care professionals,

universities and other higher education institutions, representatives from the

Ethics Commission, the Social Consultation and the Autonomous Regions

(Madeira and Azores).

Community participation in NHS institutions, particularly hospitals, is

made through consultative councils, whose intervention is relatively weak.

The new NHS Portal provides detailed information about the functioning of

NHS facilities, namely waiting times for outpatient consultations and emergency

services and average time for surgeries. It also provides a Transparency area

(

), making available a wide range of indicators

of access, efficiency and quality within the NHS in real time. In this area, the

patient can, for example, discover how many surgeries have been performed

in NHS hospitals in a given period, the public expenditure on pharmaceuticals