authorization was due.(52) The Ombudsman concluded this demand was contradictory with the legal framework of the said subsystem, as there was a specific provision of uniformisation with ADSE. As no such obligation existed in the ADSE regulations, the Ombudsman proposed, with success, for the co-payment to be done. In the framework of the National Health Service, there was an increase in the number of complaints about deficiencies in the articulation of its several layers, namely between the primary care units and hospitals. To single out two cases, the Ombudsman intervened, successfully, in a case on which a major disarray in the follow-up procedures, after a surgery, was particularly felt, and also on a situation with evidence of severe lack of communication between two hospitals belonging to the same medical center and supposed to articulate in a close network.(53) A special attention was paid, during this year, to the modifications endured by the system of ascription of support products to disabled people. The former system being too tardy and rigid in excess, especially in what concerns daily use consumables (in connection with tracheostomy, ostomy, urine drainage, among others), which, being of clinical nature nevertheless had to be submitted to the intervention of the Social Security. After several inquiries, the solution proposed by the Ombudsman, reattributing the responsibility of distribution of these products to hospitals and primary care units was reinstated.(54) Concerning the Long-Term Continued Care Network, the Ombudsman, besides other concrete complaints, intervened about two abstract issues. The first one was the normative exclusion of the access to the network of those patients who needed respiratory support. The removal of this legal restriction was duly announced. The second situation affected those citizens also benefitting from a public health subsystem (like ADSE, ADM or SAD/PSP or GNR). In this case, the access to the network depended on the availability of vacancy in an unit with an agreement with such subsystem, thus delaying the admission far more than in a similar situation, of someone only (but also) enrolled in the National Health Service.(55) The issue of access to foreign citizens, in an irregular situation, to the National Health Service has been solved since 2001, by a decision of the Ministry of Health, after an Ombudsman intervention. However, in rare occasions, there is still need to further action, such in the case of pregnancy. (52)  Complaint Q-0232/16. (53)  Complaints Q-6942/15 (cf. 6.3.1.b) and Q-2613/2016. (54)  Complaint Q-1875/16. (55)  See 6.3.1.b). | 65