President Gustavo Petro highlighted over the weekend the history of the San José de Maicao Hospital, which was the best hospital built in the country 15 years ago, provided multiple services to the population and ended up bankrupt and intervened by the State, but that must become accredited and achieve excellence.
“If there is an intervention, it is so that it is accredited, that is, the intervention plan, which is also an obligation, is to accredit, accrediting is that it is of excellence, that its indicators are of excellence,” said the head of state later. to listen to José Liñán Murgas, the first manager of the care center and whom he invited to the stage to share his experience.
Liñán participated in the inauguration of a hospitalization room and in the presentation of the new extramural equipment that will be used in the preventive health care model of the San José de Maicao Hospital.
San José was built by a hospital consortium from Catalonia, which had built more than 150 health facilities around the world. Its design – stated Liñán, who acted as manager and auditor of the work – forced the Ministry of Health to modify the construction standards of hospitals in the country.
The project cost 45 billion pesos. 70% was financed with the Hospital’s own resources and the rest of the cost was contributed by the Government of La Guajira, through royalties, and local labor was hired entirely to build the building.
Starting in 1999, San José began to provide multiple services, generate profits, and the opening of a care unit was being negotiated with the National Cancer Institute, as well as with other institutions such as the San Vicente de Paúl Hospital, in Medellín, and the University of Antioquia.
San José even provided advice for the construction of a clinic in Bolivia, and was working on turning it into an international reference center for the entire Caribbean in terms of transplants, recalled Liñán Murgas.
However, it fell into the hands of politicking and management was taken over by people who caused its fall. The final touch was given by the liquidation of the then Social Security Institute, to whose users San José provided a comprehensive service.
The debts forced the National Government to intervene, but it has not been able to fully recover, said the former manager.
According to President Petro, “a hospital is human strength taking care of life, that is a hospital, and that was what this one did not have at some point, which, José Liñán says, ended and was intervened and intervened again.”
“The crux of the matter of intervening in a health entity is so that it improves. Even here there is someone who set the bar very high: Liñán,” the president pointed out when highlighting the work accomplished by the first manager of San José de Maicao.
