Family doctors will prescribe shared baths

Each user can benefit from a single treatment up to 35% or 95 euros during the year 2019.

The spa treatments will be part of the National Health Service (NHS) starting on the first day of 2019, the year in which they will be prescribed by the family doctor and will be reimbursed again. The order issued Monday, under the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Health and the Secretary of State for Tourism, to which the JN had access, also defines the maximum amount of reimbursement per user and per series of treatments (35% or 95%). €), as well as accepted pathologies.

Until 2011, heat treatments were reimbursed by the NHS in the free regime, but they were part of the same category of treatment in the private sector, which dictated the abrupt reduction of the troika's austerity . At the time, the maximum amount reimbursed for treatment was 55 euros.

"We have proposed the equalization of the refund to the amount paid to ADSE users [95 euros], which is higher than what was in force and has been accepted, "said Victor Leal, president of the Association of Spa Therapies of Portugal, who was part of the working group that proposed the model that will enter into force of a heat treatment "varies between 200 and 350 euros, depending on the pathology", so the amount of the quota "is suitable for the first year".

EVALUATION OF THE RESULTS

With an overall budget of 600,000 euros for 2019, the spa's contribution will only benefit up to 6315 users (95 euros each), but Victor Leal believes that this will be enough even because "the year where the contributions were suspended, the total cost was about 500 thousand euros. "

After this first pilot year, the results will be evaluated in the first quarter of 2020, both in terms of costs and benefits for the NHS (thanks to a reduction in the use of medicines and requests for specialized consultations), as well as for the economy. of the country (tax gains in the thermal regions), or from the point of view of tourism. "The working group proposed to Turismo de Portugal to realize this study, but this one is still not defined like," commented Victor Leal. The Order specifies that the conditions for evaluating the results will be defined more precisely by order.

Internationalization

The integration of the spas in the NHS also has the effect of allowing European citizens who already had the possibility to attend spas under medical prescription in other countries to come for treatment in Portugal and to receive contributions from their patients. respective health services. The European Health Care Directive, which entered into force in September 2014 and represents a growth opportunity for health tourism, can now only be used for bathing and tourism.