The high turnout to emergencies in the Lisbon region and with a different patient pattern than was usual before the pandemic is worrying hospitals, at a time when several services have excessive waiting times. Yesterday at the Hospital de Santa Maria, where patients were taken from the Hospital Beatriz Ângelo in Loures in the last two days – which on Friday arrived at eight hours of waiting for seriously ill patients and which no longer receives patients referred by the Patient Guidance Centers INEM emergency on Monday – had more than two hours of waiting for urgent patients, who must be seen in a maximum of 60 minutes. By i, the Centro Hospitalar de Lisboa Norte confirmed that it has been receiving patients from other areas of the residence and with a “more complex” profile. Yesterday morning, 80% of patients in emergency care at this hospital were screened with an orange or yellow wristband, which motivates more differentiated diagnoses and longer care, explained the institution’s official source. It is a different pattern from the one that used to congest as emergencies, with greater weight of gravity without gravity or as so-called “false urgencies”, people who were to have been observed outside the context of emergency. This situation on Friday had already been pointed out to Nascer do SOL as an explanation for the overload in the emergency room of Hospital Beatriz Ângelo, which ran out of space to receive more patients. Despite an increase in respiratory infections (in the last ones they represented more than 8% of visits to the emergency room at national level), doctors are noticing a greater decompensation in patients who are admitted to hospitals with uncontrolled chronic disease. decompensated diabetes to undiagnosed cardiac and oncological problems, often requiring hospitalization, which with the covid-19 circuits in force today is a more complex process, as a larger test is needed before hospitalization, which leads to a occupation of the areas of care for respiratory patients.

Yesterday at the end of the day, Beatriz Ângelo was expected to reopen to urgent patients transported by INEM and firefighters, but hospitals receive increased pressure over the next few weeks, particularly in the region of the country where there are more patients without a family doctor assigned in health centers.