Mutual reproaches and accusations about neglect of functions have been present in the meeting held this Wednesday between the Ministry of Health and the autonomous communities – within the framework of the Interterritorial Health Council – to address the lack of doctors in Primary Care … facing summer. The Health Ministers of the autonomous communities – especially from the PP, but also that of the Basque Country – have accused Mónica García of not providing solutions to this deficit of professionals, while the head of the ministry has highlighted that it is the regions that They must have contingency plans for these situations and that most of them have “done their homework” and therefore will be able to tackle the situation with less complexity. However, the closure of health centers due to this deficit during the summer season is something that everyone takes for granted.
«It is going to be a difficult summer and, therefore, we would have liked the Ministry to have been much more receptive when it came to taking braver measures, when it came to taking specific measures, but that they could face this serious crisis. that we are going to have,” said the Minister of Health of Castilla y León, Alejandro Vázquez, after the meeting. In it, the counselor has assured, the minister “has assumed” the closure of some Primary Care centers due to the shortage of professionals, which can also take its toll on some hospital services. “It will be difficult for the entire Spanish population to receive health care anywhere in the territory,” he stressed.
«There are communities, such as the Basque Country and Catalonia, that are closing health centers. We want to keep them open, but we are facing a very difficult situation,” said the Andalusian counselor, Catalina García. In general, “disappointment” and “indignation” have been the words most used by the PP councilors, who had requested by letter a few weeks ago that this meeting be held. “The ministry and the minister have not done their homework,” said the Madrid counselor, Fátima Matute, who maintains that the autonomous communities had attended the meeting with concrete measures on the table and has also accused Mónica García of not knowing the summer plans for Ceuta and Melilla, the only regions whose health system depends on the ministry.
But Mónica García defends that it is not that the ministry “assumes” these closures, as the PP councilors denounce, but that this situation responds to “a structural problem” of the health system, also motivated, she regretted, because the staff “they are fair.” Along these lines, the Minister of Health of the Valencian Community, Marciano Gómez, has warned that the deficit of professionals puts at risk the opening of 54 auxiliary centers and the staff coverage in 70 health centers in the region in the coming months. The autonomy has more than 600 vacant medical positions, he regretted and stated that last December he warned the minister that “the structural problem of lack of professionals would worsen this summer if he did not provide solutions to have fourth-grade residents. anus”.
And this is the other big problem, denounce the PP councilors, because this summer is “worse” than the previous ones for one reason: the final year internal resident doctors (MIR) will still continue in their training process, since they are the which started in 2020 and had to do so months later due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Normally, in the summer the autonomous communities could hire them as specialists once they had finished the residency, but this year this possibility does not exist.
Several regions also wanted to address this issue with the ministry, which had already warned that the MIR cannot be alone in consultation, that is, they cannot be the ones to cover the vacations of the rest of the professionals, since according to Minister Mónica García this situation would break the law.
Will put the functions in writing
On this point, it has been agreed that the Ministry will send in writing to the communities what residents can and cannot do based on the regulations, as well as initiatives that the different administrations can carry out to alleviate the situation, such as economic incentives. for standing guard, for example. The minister assumes that no community is going to “break the law” and, although her department is open to receiving and evaluating all the proposals that the regions consider appropriate, she once again warned after the meeting that her department “does not “It will endorse any measure that conflicts with the training of professionals, with training plans and with current legislation.”
But initiatives that some communities have already proposed have been valued. For example, it will be possible for final-year MIRs to work during those summer months in other centers that, despite not being where they usually practice, have teaching units that can take on their training and have a greater need for more staff. And this is what Aragón will do, for example, whose advisor, José Luis Bancalero, has explained that final year Family Medicine residents who are training in the territory will be able to fill positions that are difficult to fill in centers in the autonomous community during the summer, for which they will be offered economic incentives. Of course, they will have resident contracts, as until now, not specialists.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Health will study the possibility that these residents can also travel to work in other centers where there are no teaching units, that is, where there is normally no MIR carrying out the residency because there is no possibility of tutoring them. In these cases, the transfer of the attending physician will also be sought to supervise them.
Anger of the Basque Country
But the anger with the minister has not only come from the popular communities. The Health Minister of the Basque Government, Gotzone Sagardui, did not attend the meeting due to the lack of measures from the Ministry of Health, she explained later. She has also regretted that on several occasions she has asked García’s department to promote concrete measures to solve the lack of professionals, but without success. “It is the responsibility of the communities to organize, and the Ministry has to respond from its powers and there has been no movement,” she complained.
