IL advocates merit-based contests for hospital administrators

A president of the Liberal Initiative (IL), Mariana Leitão, today defended the holding of contests based on merit for the choice of boards of directors of the Local Health Units (ULS) to end the party 'boys'.

“ We want people to be chosen for their merit, their abilities, their experience. That is what will ensure that, in essence, the board of directors can have people who have this experience and competence and who will certainly be able to make better decisions. As long as we have the administrations dominated by party cards, competence will always be a problem,” he said.

Mariana Leitão referred to the criticism of the Government and the Health Minister, after the recent deaths at the Hospital de Portimão and the case involving the director of the ULS of Aveiro.

In statements to the agency Lusa, in the margins of the Minho Liberal Forum 2026 on regionalization organized by the Territorial Center of Ponte de Lima, in the district of Viana do Castelo, the leader of IL said that as long as hospital administrations are “dominated by party cards, competence will always be a problem”.

“They took the boys from the PS to now put the boys from the PSD. What we see are people with no experience in the area, deeply incompetent to be named only by the party card or, by the political sympathies they have,” he said, referring to the sequence of deaths of users waiting for assistance in the emergency service of the Hospital de Portimão.

On Wednesday, the president of the District Commission of Aquida in the Algarve demanded the “strict investigation” of the episodes recorded in the emergency rooms of Hospital de Portimão, defending urgent measures and accountability of those involved.

Both the Algarve ULS and the General Inspection of Health Activities (IGAS) have started investigations after the cases have been revealed.

On November 7, the mayor of Portimão stated that the cases of deaths due to alleged lack of care in the city hospital are “extreme gravity” and require “urgent measures”, while the secretary-general of the PS, José Luís Carneiro, asked the government and the Prime Minister for clarification, classifying the information as “very worrying” for a unit serving thousands of inhabitants of various municipalities of the Algarve barlavento.

Two days later, the Health Minister announced that she was going to fire the president of the ULS of the Algarve, Tiago Martins da Silva, because the urgency of the Hospital de Portimão was not working well and the manager was aware of these difficulties of operation.

On Friday, the Prime Minister said that he has confidence in the Health Minister, Ana Paula Martins, stressing that he is doing his work “in a situation that is much more complex than it was two and a half years ago”.

In statements to journalists at the end of the informal summit of the European Union leaders in Dublin, Luís Montenegro was asked whether he maintains confidence in Ana Paula Martins after the recent deaths at Portimão Hospital and the case involving the director of the ULS of Aveiro.

“ Of course, the minister is doing her job and we have been making important decisions to improve our National Health Service (SNS), to ensure that he has the ability to respond in a situation that is much more complex than it was two and a half years ago, since they entered about 500,000 users in this period in the SNS ", answered the Prime Minister.

Montenegro stressed that the SNS is currently under “an increasing pressure from the point of view of users”.

“ And the investments we have made and made in the last two and a half years require, first, more infrastructure, more equipment, better management capacity, better capacity to retain human resources, because, without doctors, without nurses, without assistants, there is no response capacity ", listed.

The Prime Minister acknowledged that “unfortunately, everything is not going well”.

“And when things go less well, it has to be decided. This is what happened also in the SNS ", said.