LISBON’S FUTURE Central Hospitalar de Lisboa Ocidental (CHLO) envisages sending doctors to some patients’ homes to perform evaluations. Chronically sick individuals from the S. Francisco Xavier, Egas Moniz and Santa Cruz hospitals all stand to gain from home visits. The initiative, announced by Health Minister Correia de Campos, will embrace the CHLO, the capital’s new hospital, work on which is due to begin next year.
All three aforementioned hospitals, currently individual corporations, will come together with the new hospital to become a common institution under a constitution that is still to be drawn up.
The ministry says that the measure will ease access to the hospitals and avoid unnecessary journeys to emergency departments. Nursing professionals will go to patients’ houses, appraising the need to intern them, a procedure that Correia de Campos believes will be followed by other hospitals.
José Miguel Boquinhas, president of the administration council of the future CHLO, says that the first home visits will initially be made to the oldest and sickest patients, before the visits are extended at a later date.
The cost of the initiative is not yet known, but Boquinhas envisages support from the ministry in buying more vehicles to allow staff to travel to patients’ homes. The CHLO is the second such hospital to be created in the capital, following the example of the Central Hospitalar de Lisboa, which also unites the hospitals of Capuchos, Desterro and S. José under a common constitution.
