Hospital de Faro shows 16-hour emergency wait; Algarve health chief blames system errors

Wait times surge in Algarve hospitals

Portugal's Algarve region recorded some of the country's longest emergency-room wait times over the weekend of 14 to 15 August, with the SNS portal showing urgent patients at Hospital de Faro waiting 15 hours and 52 minutes for a first medical observation on Saturday at noon. At Hospital de Portimão, the same triage category faced waits of 4 hours and 13 minutes. The data, published by the Serviço Nacional de Saúde portal, contrasted with the recommended maximum of 60 minutes for patients classified as urgent, identified by a yellow wristband. Very urgent patients, with an orange wristband, should be seen within 10 minutes, and less urgent cases with a green wristband within 120 minutes. At most other hospitals in the country, average wait times were under two hours.

Official disputes portal data

Tiago Botelho, president of the Unidade Local de Saúde do Algarve, rejected the figures, attributing them to errors in the Alert computer system that feeds the SNS portal. He told Lusa that the system calculates averages based on only a few hours of activity, making it sensitive to isolated incidents, particularly overnight when admissions are low.

In the case of this night, Friday and early Saturday morning, we had errors in the Alert system.

Botelho cited the example of Portimão, where the system indicated a 17-hour wait for a very urgent patient, which he called "false and impossible." After the error was corrected, the average dropped from 13 hours to four hours within minutes, a change he described as "obviously mathematically impossible." At 14:50 on Saturday, the portal showed approximately 41 minutes for urgent patients in Faro, a figure Botelho considered "close to reality."

It is not real, since the 25 patients that the Portal presents are no longer waiting.

He rejected the four-hour figure still showing for Portimão and denied that any urgent or very urgent patients were waiting for observation at either hospital around midday, as the portal had indicated.

Pressure across the country

The strain extended beyond the Algarve. On Friday morning, urgent patients at Hospital Garcia de Orta in Almada waited six hours, while Santa Maria in Lisbon and the hospital in Barreiro each recorded five-hour waits. Portimão had the longest Friday morning wait at seven and a half hours. By Friday afternoon, a very urgent patient at Santa Maria faced a two-hour wait against the recommended 10 minutes, and urgent patients at Faro waited more than three hours. At Hospital de Nossa Senhora do Rosário in Barreiro, less urgent patients waited 18 hours and 10 minutes on Saturday, against a recommended 120 minutes. Hospitals Amadora-Sintra and Sintra had no data available on the portal.

Minister acknowledges improvement

Health Minister Ana Paula Martins said on Friday that the situation is better than three years ago and credited government measures for the improvement, while admitting the scenario is not ideal. Summer typically brings peak pressure, coinciding with the holiday season for health professionals. This week saw renewed pressure with elevated wait times returning for first observations. The government has argued that metropolitan emergency units will be essential to resolving the problem. The SNS has recommended that patients contact the Linha SNS 24 at 808 24 24 24 before going to an emergency department when the situation is not a medical emergency.