The expected increase in transfers to the SNS by 5.7%, or 752 million euros, will be insufficient to prevent hospitals from continuing to show negative results this year, predicts the president of the Portuguese Association of Hospital Administrators (APAH).
“The accounts for 2024 are not yet closed, but practically all hospitals will have negative results. And With what is foreseen in the Budget for 2025, unfortunately, I expect it to continue happening”says Xavier Barreto in an interview with Negócios and Antena 1 on the Conversa Capital program.
In 2024, until November, the SUS deficit exceeded R$900 millionaccording to the latest budget execution data available, with the Government resorting to a extraordinary injection of 976 million in December so that hospitals could pay off debts with suppliers. The practice has been recurrent over the last few years and, even with changes in the financing model for local health units with the new SUS Executive Board, it continues to occur. First, says Xavier Barreto, because “the OE does not foresee a series of changes that will later be implemented by the Government”. For example, when it comes to salary increases. “In the same way that we know that drugs costing millions of euros will enter, as they do every year. Therapeutic innovation does not stop, and this is not foreseen”, he explains.
“The Government knows this. Every year it reaches the end of the year with a deficit of around one billion euros and makes an extraordinary injection of capital for hospitals, now ULS, to pay debt to the pharmaceutical industry”, says the president of APAH , arguing that “financing has to be more adequate and fair”. “The Government is not unaware of this. And if you make this extraordinary injection of capital at the end of the year, why not do it at the beginning via financing?“, he asks.
Source: www.jornaldenegocios.pt
