About

Grupo Trofa Saúde is the fourth-largest healthcare group in Portugal, providing critical services to its extensive consumer base across the country. A varied and growing workload occupies the Grupo Trofa Saúde legal team, which has led to its recent restructuring and expansion, as head of legal Pedro Ferraz points out. ‘The first thing to say is that the legal team has doubled [in size] in the last two years, due to the internal structural reorganisation’, he explains, ‘which is when we first started with the three-group structure’. Ferraz mentions the mix of specialist and generalist lawyers in the team: ‘We have some lawyers who are specialised in private healthcare, and we have other lawyers who are specialised in real estate, for example, but also we have people who are not specialised in business areas but in areas of law’. It is indeed true that the team is well supplied with legal talent. Diana Martins, healthcare licensing legal counsel, is a private healthcare regulatory specialist whose expertise has paid dividends in a number of areas. ‘Because of her know-how in this area’, Ferraz explains, ‘we are able to open our hospitals or private clinics with a reduced number of difficulties from the public authorities notwithstanding the strict regulations currently in force’. Corporate legal counsel Teresa Mota Pinto is a recent member of the team and has also had a huge impact since joining. ‘[She is] of paramount importance for the legal team to be able to guarantee in-house the corporate aspects and the complex group structures, and she also has important technical know-how on the real estate sector’, says Ferraz. The team is keen to respond and resolve potential medical liability cases as quickly as possible, first and foremost for ethical reasons but also because brand reputation is so crucial for companies looking to achieve success in the healthcare sector. ‘How the group is seen by customers is incredibly important, and in the last years we have had strong success in [the medical liability] area, winning all of the cases we have been involved in’.