SNS wants to create special centres throughout country by end of 2024
Portugal’s SNS health service has a new plan to both speed up the issuing of medical and psychological assessments, and free-up family doctors. It wants to create a network of national centres solely for the purpose of ‘atestados médicos’ (doctors’ certificates) by the end of 2024.
These CAMPs (Centros de Avaliação Médica e Psicológica) would be the go to places for citizens who need to renew their driving, hunting, nautical, firearms licences – or for any other reason required to present an ‘atestado médico’.
Right now, all these ‘atestados’ have to be passed by a family doctor (State or private doctor), which usually requires prior booking, and more often than not, quite a bit of waiting.
This new plan should the remove the waiting, could even remove the booking…
Says the country’s SNS Executive director Fernando Araújo “it is an innovative service for users”, and currently being piloted in Matosinhos/ the Alto Minho region.
And he highlighted another potential bonus of the idea: it precludes “any friction that could be created” if, for example, an atestado is not passed/ granted. Whereas with a family doctor, patients could become very dissatisfied if the decision was taken that they were not fit to drive, or renew a firearms licence, they will probably accept the decision better from a medical professional whom they have never met before…
Fernando Araújo says he is quite convinced CAMPs will be a success. There will also be the possibility for people to access an online portal to book slots.
Now it is just a question of waiting for the new system to be rolled out…
