It is “perfectly possible” for a doctor to earn €400,000 for additional surgeries, says NHS director

The chief executive of the NHS said today that it is "perfectly possible" for a doctor "who works hard" to earn 400,000 euros in a year by performing additional surgeries in public hospitals to reduce waiting lists.

Álvaro Almeida was speaking at the Parliamentary Health Committee, where he was heard at the request of the Liberal Initiative (IL) bench regarding the additional production of the dermatology service at the Santa Maria Local Health Unit, after it became known that a doctor received hundreds of thousands of euros for operating on patients on Saturdays.

"If there were no fraud—we don't know, because the investigation isn't complete—it's entirely possible that there isn't fraud and a doctor who works hard could earn around €400,000 a year. We can't conclude from this that there's a lack of oversight," said the head of the Executive Directorate of the National Health Service (DE-SNS).

Speaking to the deputies, Álvaro Almeida said that he did not intend to give answers at the hearing about this specific case of the Santa Maria Hospital, claiming that a process opened by the General Inspectorate of Health Activities (IGAS) is underway and has not yet reached any conclusions.

"I must say that I'm not sure, because, as I don't have any results in this specific case, I don't know if there was a lack of oversight. There may have been, and may have been, fraud; we don't know," said the SNS executive director, responding to IL MP Joana Cordeiro.

The Liberal parliamentarian highlighted the importance of additional surgical production, but considered that the hearings already held on this case indicate "serious oversight failures" and, mainly, a "question of a lack of oversight and monitoring of the system."

In his response, Álvaro Almeida emphasized that drawing this conclusion “from the simple fact that there was a doctor who earned 400 thousand euros in additional production” does not in itself reveal a lack of control.

"As you know, SIGIC [Integrated Management System for Surgery Registrations] and additional production exist to recover waiting lists, to allow the population to have access to health care, and the health professionals who work in additional production are remunerated for their additional effort," said the DE-SNS official, highlighting that, for now, there is no data that allows us to conclude that there was a lack of control.

During the hearing, Álvaro Almeida also stated that “DE-SNS is not a central planner” for the National Health Service, which “is not organized into a central committee that controls the entire system.”

"What [the DE-SNS] does is monitor compliance with program contracts at the service level, not individually. There are 150,000 people working in the SNS, and it's not the executive board that will monitor those 150,000 people," Álvaro Almeida added.