28 new Family Health Units will open in Portugal
O Government will open 28 new Family Health Units (USF) in the first six months of 2023, promised a statement sent by the Health Minister’s office, this Wednesday, to newsrooms.
According to the note, with this measure the Ministry of Health hopes to improve “the response of Primary Health Care, a priority area in the development of the National Health Service (SNS)”.
These units correspond, according to the Executive, “to small multidisciplinary teams, bringing together doctors, nurses and clinical secretaries, who contract with the respective Groups of Health Centers the response to be given to a given population, guaranteeing full coverage of doctors and family nurses to its users”.
By June 30, 2023, there will also be a review process of the payment-for-performance model in force in these units, “which aims to adjust the model to the continuous improvement of the provision of care to users”.
The ministry led by Manuel Pizarro recalls that “the objective was set to reach 80% coverage at the end of the legislature” and that these new units are another “decisive step” towards achieving that, as “they will allow assigning a family doctor to more than 30,000 patients”.
It should be remembered that, currently, the 604 Family Health Units of the SNS (290 USF-A and 314 USF-B) cover 65% of the Portuguese population.
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