The Minister of Health, Manuel Pizarro, said this Thursday that he had doubts about the classification of the medical career as a profession of risk and rapid wear and tear, proposed by the Order of Doctors, for fear that it would become excessive.
“I have a little doubt about this type of classification. Not because I don’t consider it, because I am a doctor myself, not because I don’t realize that doctors are subject to a very significant effort, but because, in fact, there are many other professions in the society that claim the same status, and I can’t help but have some fear that this classification becomes a little excessive”, he said, in Porto, in statements to journalists.
The medical career report delivered on Wednesday by the chairman of the Order of Doctors (OM), Miguel Guimarães, to the holder of the Health portfolio, proposes that this profession be considered a risky and quick-wearing profession and recommends that the basic remuneration in new salary scale that is “being negotiated with the unions” has “as a reference the career of magistrates or university professors”.
The government official, who admits that the report contains measures that “deserve to be studied and implemented”, considers that “there are other ways to achieve professional balance and compensation” than his classification.
With regard to salary, Manuel Pizarro is not committed to any remuneration basis, stressing that this is being the subject of debate with the representative organizations of the sector.
“We are working on a negotiation with the Physicians Union that involves many aspects. It involves the regulation of the so-called full dedication that was consecrated by the new statute of the SNS [Serviço Nacional de Saúde], involves models of organization and discipline and also involves the salary scale. It is in this context that we have to hold this debate”, he said, on the sidelines of the presentation ceremony of the new identity of the Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Santo António, in Porto.
On Wednesday, the chairman of OM said that several recommendations set out in the medical career report, delivered to the Minister of Health, have no financial impact, their implementation depending on the political will of the Government.
“There are aspects that do not involve investment, but a different way of organizing and managing things”, Miguel Guimarães told the Lusa agency after delivering the document resulting from the work carried out by OM in recent years.
The report also includes the “major challenges” that the SNS faces, in areas such as the cost of care, user access, medical innovation and the country’s demographic evolution, and presents measures in several areas to modernize and streamline the system. of national health.