According to staff working at the University Hospital of Torrevieja, the summer has been a “genuine catastrophe” for the provision of healthcare, as they reveal that thousands of patients gave up waiting at the Emergency Room and left without treatment.
According to the medics, 3,934 people left the Emergency Room during the months of July and August. Of the 14,734 people requesting treatment at the facility, the figures reveal that more than 26% (one in four patients) left without being treated.
The information is the latest revelation in a series of failures highlighted since the hospital was transferred to public management, after the private company Ribera Salud was removed from the operation on October 15, 2021. In all services there is widespread discontent, including patients and political leaders of the Vega Baja region.
This discontent and calls such as those made by the mayor of Torrevieja, Eduardo Dolón, to the Minister of Health, Miguel Mínguez, have caused the regional secretary for Efficiency and Health Technology, Concha Andrés, to appear in the hospital on Monday to assess the situation first hand, although of course this is now not at the same peak usage as it was in the middle of summer.
The visit was a surprise, however, and not communicated to the Company Committee. However, the representatives of the workers took the opportunity to explain their organisational and salary complaints. And it is that since the Ministry of Health took the reins, the negotiations of the collective agreement have been frozen.
This rate of departing untreated patients is the highest, by far, since 2015. The highest previous figure is from 2021, in the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic, when 1,792 people “escaped” out of a total of 16,313, barely 10.9%.
In 2020, just 644 people left without treatment out of a total of 12,809 registered in the Emergency Room, just 5%. And, even less, in previous years.
The unions consider that the department “has gone back 30 years in patient care” and explain how in some health centres dependent on the hospital, people have people waiting outside at 7 in the morning to receive “a piece of paper” with their appointment, giving only 25 of those papers per doctor are issued. If they didn’t get a number, they had to come back the next day.
In fact, they no longer attribute their problems to the Ministry of Health, but directly to the manager of the department, “who does not see the existence of any problem in the working conditions in which we carry out our work and in the service we are providing to the patients”.
A demonstration is set to take place on Tuesday 27 September, starting at 19:00 at the Plaza de la Constitución in Torrevieja, demanding “decent healthcare” and aims to denounce the “lack of doctors and nurses” in the Torrevieja health department.
