54 fewer hospital beds in La Rioja. It is the calculation made by SATSE who assures that throughout the country there will be more than 10,400 fewer beds in operation due to the closure, they say, “which the Health Ministries have planned for another year, taking advantage of the summer period.” And this union remembers that “once the Covid-19 pandemic is over, the trend of bed closures is increasing since in 2022 there were 8,594 beds closed in the State as a whole, while last year there were a total of 9,809, and in 2024, 10,463, even without the data from Madrid.” Even so, they already warn that this is a global figure “on the decline because different centers and services have not wanted to provide the data, arguing that it will depend on the future evolution of the situation.” Opacity that the union also denounces, alleging “the difficulties that exist every year in obtaining information that is of general interest.”
Thus, they remember that the scheduled and progressive closure of beds available for the entire population “is a common practice of all health administrations in the summer months, as is the suspension of hundreds of outpatient consultations, diagnostic tests and surgical interventions in all hospitals and other public health centers.” By community, in La Rioja the closure of 54 beds is expected; in Andalusia 2,500 beds will be closed; 2,079 beds in Catalonia, and in the Valencian Community there are 1,002 beds. A total of 974 in Euskadi; 784 in Galicia; in Extremadura, 617 beds and 600 in Aragón. Regarding Castilla y León, the forecast is 500 and 490 beds in Asturias.
For its part, in Murcia there are 300 beds; in Castilla-La Mancha, the planned closure affects 192 beds; in the Balearic Islands, there are 143; and in Navarra, a minimum of 106 closed beds. In the Canary Islands there are 70 beds, while in Cantabria there are at least 52 closed beds.
But in addition to the closure of beds, SATSE denounces that again this year “public administrations have not covered the total vacancies due to vacation periods, sick leave and other types of situations that would require replacing staff, which leads to an increase in work overload for nurses who work during the summer months. In fact, they estimate that the “percentage of personnel that is not replaced will reach 40-50 percent in the case of some autonomous community. A reality that has a negative impact on the care provided to people and also on the health of professionals.”
In this regard, SATSE points out that “the percentages of personnel replacement are not absolute data, since they are “made up” precisely by this closure of beds and services, which in reality aims to save replacements by moving personnel from one service to another.” .
All these circumstances, bed closure and the suspension of consultations, tests and surgical interventions “will have a direct impact on the increase in waiting lists in recent years.” Therefore, they regret that “despite their protests and complaints, the ministries and the Ministry of Health have not reached an agreement this year, within the Interterritorial Council of the SNS, to end the health problems in the months of summer, and that they have limited themselves to engaging in criticism and reproaches between one another, depending on their political sign, instead of looking for synergies and common points.
