Improving the quality of hospital care in Portugal

Portugal has committed significant efforts to reorganising its hospital sector and improving quality of hospital outcome of care in recent years. These efforts – specialisation and concentration of hospital services, new models of hospital management and payment systems, developing quality and safety standards as well as supporting hospital benchmarking – suggest that Portugal is moving toward having a more rationalised hospital system. Portugal has improved hospital outcome of care (such as decreasing both caesarian-section rates and disease-specific mortality rates), and has also reduced hospital spending. Although good progress has been made, space for improvement remains and some areas of weakness can be identified.