… while the excess death rate in Portugal is still “extremely high”.
Today’s “health services outrage” is how the concept of telemedicine seems to have been “hijacked” to boost health service performance numbers via social media.
According to Jornal de Notícias, “Portuguese hospitals count emails and phone calls as consultations.”
They’ve been doing this for about a year. The end result is “an increase in unreliability and confusion”.
Telemedicine has done nothing for the country’s high levels of excess deaths—an average of more than 120,000 annually over the past three years.
In fact, an independent information provider Bajina M wrote on December 14th The day before yesterday saw the highest number of deaths of the year, at 468. The past few days have seen an increase in all-cause deaths, even as hospital emergencies and respiratory infections slowed. What are the Portuguese dying from? no one knows Because the Ministry of Health does not publish its studies and the Central Health Administration has not yet committed itself to the decision of the Lisbon Administrative Court to disclose data on morbidity and mortality in the hospital.
What can be said easily is thatThe increase in telemedicine has done nothing to solve the problem of excess deaths.
The latest report from the Health Regulatory Authorities (ERS) shows that “teleconsultations increased by 214% from 2019 to 2020, the first year of the pandemic”.
Add phone calls and email to the picture, and the increase is 465%.
But, says Castilla (President of the Portuguese Telemedicine Association), this is not the way to approach this specialty.
“When we talk about telemedicine, we are talking about a video call consultation where, on the one hand, there are the patient and the doctor, and on the other hand there is the specialist.”
“We started this pediatric cardiology at the University Hospital and Center of Coimbra in 1998 and currently we have a network with all the hospitals in the center area and with PALOP countries. There are patients from these countries who, after such a consultation, come directly to the surgery.”
This does not happen as a result of a phone call or even an email from a hospital.
In other words, the current data is misleading. This suggests that hospitals are seeing more patients – “treating” them – than they actually do.
“Consider all contact with the patient because telemedicine seems to me to be intended only to be of service. The numbers do not reflect reality,” Castilla told JN.
According to TSF broadcast, the ERS now wants an “urgent clarification of concepts with hospitals”. For example, data from the SNS portal shows that the number of telemedicine “consultations” jumped by 697% between 2020 and 2021.
People who read TSF text on the Internet seem to have no illusions. ” Teleconsultation is the absence and denial of the medical act. A method to mask SNS productivity and increase mortality One reader wrote. Another commented, “It’s pure and simple work for special projects. it’s a scam.
