Health Systems in Transition - Portugal

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Health systems in transition Portugal 22
The following services are part of the Public Enterprise Sector, including
public hospitals and other entities:
• Shared Services – Ministry of Health (Serviços Partilhados do
Ministério da Saúde, SPMS), which provides specific shared health-
related services in matters of purchasing and logistics, financial
management, human resources, information and communications systems,
and other supplementary and subsidiary activities to organizations that
are part of the NHS, irrespective of their legal nature, as well as to bodies
and services of the Ministry of Health and any other organizations, as
long as they carry out activities specific to the health field.
• Local Health Units (Unidades Locais de Saúde), which were created
in 1999 to generate greater and better communication between primary
care and hospitals, through a vertical integration of different levels of
care. Currently, there are eight local health units in Portugal: Matosinhos,
Northern Minho/Viana do Castelo and Northeast/Bragança (North);
Guarda and Castelo Branco (Centre); and Northern/Portalegre, Southern/
Beja and Coastal/Santiago do Cacém Alentejo (Alentejo).
• Hospital Centres and other Public Enterprise Hospitals (Centros
Hospitalares e Hospitais ), which include hospitals that are ruled as
EPEs. Among them, there are hospitals that were grouped into Hospital
Centres and others that remained as individual institutions. The rationale
behind the creation of Hospital Centres was to improve efficiency through
better coordination between institutions providing hospital care in the
same geographical area. Both Hospital Centres and Hospitals are public
enterprises, meaning that hospital boards have some level of autonomy
and management accountability, compared with hospitals from the public
administrative sector.
There are other bodies related to health care that do not belong to the
Ministry’s administration, either directly or indirectly.
• National Health Council (Conselho Nacional de Saúde), which is
the consultative and independent body for the Ministry of Health. It is
responsible for issuing recommendations and advice on measures to
enforce the implementation of health policies.
• Health Regulatory Agency (Entidade Reguladora da Saúde), which
is an independent body responsible for the regulation of the health care
sector. Its functions include the supervision of health care institutions
regarding operating requirements, patients’ access to health care and