The waiting time for urgent patients in the general emergency service at Hospital Amadora-Sintra was around 5 pm when it was 2 pm this Thursday, December 4th. This delay is due to a greater influx of complex cases, according to the institution.
According to data from the National Health Service (SNS) portal, consulted by the Lusa agency, at that time there were 51 urgent patients (yellow bracelet) in the General Emergency Service of Hospital Fernando Fonseca (Amadora-sintra) who were waiting an average of 17 hours and 12 minutes for the first observation.
The wait for the 12 very urgent patients (orange bracelet) was 12 minutes and two hours and 46 minutes for the 54 less urgent patients (green bracelet).
Contacted by Lusa, an official source from the Amadora-Sintra Local Health Unit explained that the hospital has been registering a higher-than-usual turnout at the general emergency service since last week with a particularly high number of urgent users.
“Many of these patients have decompensated chronic pathologies that require a more detailed clinical assessment and a longer period of observation and stay in the service”, he added.
According to the same source, a higher incidence of respiratory diseases is also beginning to be seen, which has also contributed to the increase in demand.
“The greater complexity of clinical cases is being reflected in waiting times, despite the efforts being made by the teams”, he stated, hoping that average waiting times may decrease in the coming hours.
The hospital appeals to users, before going to the hospital emergency room, to contact the National Health Service Contact Center – SNS24 (808242424) by telephone, in order to avoid unnecessary trips to the emergency room,
Garcia de Orta Hospital, in Almada, also has high average waiting times, with 54 urgent patients waiting, at 2:00 pm, six hours and twenty-two minutes for their first observation.
The average wait for two very urgent patients was one hour and eight minutes and for the 13 non-urgent users it was three hours and thirteen minutes.
According to the triage system, very urgent situations (orange) are recommended to be attended to within 10 minutes following triage, while urgent cases (yellow) require 60 minutes and less urgent cases (green) require 120 minutes.
According to information on the SNS Portal, “the calculation of the average time is given by the average time elapsed since the user entered the phase they are in (waiting for screening, waiting for the first observation or under observation)”.