Friday, March 29

The Patient Ombudsman warns that more than 140,000 people are waiting for an operation in Catalonia

The association The Patient Ombudsman warns in its annual report that 141,164 people are on the waiting list for an operation in Catalonia, the community where more patients are awaiting an intervention. Even so, the association states that the surgical waiting list has “lightened considerably”, with 26,352 fewer patients than the previous year, and that the waiting time is around 152 days (223 in 2020).

The entity indicates that, according to data from the Ministry of Health of June 30, 2021, 661,162 patients await an operation in the state, with an average time of 121 days. The association has received 1,704 complaints for alleged medical negligence in Catalonia.

The Patient Ombudsman warns in the report of 2021 that the waiting lists in the Spanish state are “a political failure” since they continue to be the “pending subject” of the health administrations and adds that no community “can boast” of it. For the entity, the waiting lists are a “distinctive of inequality” between communities.

Despite the fact that the Ministry’s data shows that surgical waiting lists have fallen compared to 2020 –30,346 fewer patients and 49 days less waiting–, the association warns that these are “official, not real” figures and fears that they are “superior”.

In this sense, he accuses the majority of regional health departments of “cheating” to “make up” the data and warns that there are “many patients who have had surgeries deprogrammed” in one of the waves of the pandemic and that these citations “have been lost along the way without being accounted for again”.

For all this, the Patient Ombudsman asks the Ministry of Health to carry out a “more exhaustive” control as an “external audit” on the type of computation made by the ministries and to immediately address the problem of waiting lists with a budgetary effort that increases human resources and beds in health centers. The entity also emphasizes primary care and asks policy makers to reinforce it for its “ability to solve most of the population’s problems.” “There are no toilets and there are no means,” he emphasizes.

In 2021, the Patient Ombudsman received a total of 13,156 cases of alleged medical negligence, 2,647 more than in 2020. Of these, 628 resulted in the death of the patient, 100 more than the previous year. The entity warns that the figure is assimilated to those of more than a decade ago, when 2011 registered 13,010 cases. The association considers that the pandemic has left “the shame of the national health system bare”, which continues, it maintains, with its “selfless character”. “We have the best professionals, but they are overloaded and poorly paid,” says the entity in the document.

In Catalonia, 1,704 cases have been reported, of which 1,396 in the Barcelona region; 193 to those of Tarragona; 72 to those of Girona and 43 to those of Lleida. Of those cases, 70 people died. The claims, specialties and services with the most complaints are the waiting lists; General Surgery; emergencies; traumatology and gynecology and obstetrics.



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