"Within the system, primary health care is the patient's 'advocate'." This was the phrase with the most impact on the audience that attended the conference given by the CEO of Luz Saúde, Isabel Vaz, at the headquarters of the Regional Health Administration of Lisbon and Tagus Valley (ARSLVT), on the 5th of July. Isabel Vaz was invited to speak about private corporate governance, in front of all the ACES executive directors (Groups of Primary Healthcare Centers) in the Lisbon region, an audience that was especially interested in the words of the CEO of Luz Saúde and who made a point of not leave no question unanswered over the several hours the conference took place. According to the report published on the ARSLVT website, she spoke of the importance of the National Health Service (SNS) as a pillar of sustainability and development in the country, highlighting the history and role of the Luz Saúde group, which in just over 20 years conquered a place of reference in the national health system. “The patient must be accompanied by the financing”. “Within the system, Primary Health Care is the 'advocate' of the patient”, so they should have “the freedom to direct the user to the care he needs”. Specialists in General and Family Medicine are a kind of “sentinel doctors” whose role contributes to the improvements that must be made in the articulation with other specialties or hospital departments. At a time when the SNS is committed to the creation of Local Health Units (ULS), Isabel Vaz recalled that, in the Hospital da Luz Network, hospital specialties coexist, from the beginning, with General and Family Medicine, in the context of a corporate governance that enables FGM doctors to control and monitor their patients more effectively, in all dimensions of their clinical needs. This follow-up, she said, results in better control of comorbidities, a management close to the perioperative period and a significant reduction in the need for urgent care, among others. At the ARSLVT conference, Isabel Vaz also spoke about the partnership with the Faculty of Medicine of the Catholic University of Portugal, which transformed Hospital da Luz Lisboa into the first private university hospital. And she addressed the importance of digital technologies, robotics, and artificial intelligence in the development of medicine and health in general.
