More and more diagnostic tests are being carried out in conjunction with private healthcare in Andalusia. That is the conclusion that can be drawn from the data offered by the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) and to which elDiario.es Andalucía has had access. Specifically, in the last decade the number of this type of consultations has grown by almost 170%, while with public resources the increase has been limited to 35.36%, five times less. The growth has occurred both during the time of the PSOE at the head of the Junta de Andalucía and with the PP governments of Juan Manuel Moreno.
Diagnostic tests are those in which a citizen undergoes an x-ray, an analysis or a blood test. That is, those complementary medical consultations that are made to determine with specific data whether or not the patient suffers from the ailment for which he or she has gone to the doctor.
If a person goes to undergo these diagnoses at the SAS, they may be done either in a public center or in a subsidized one, depending on the availability of both health personnel and facilities and technical means. According to official data obtained by elDiario.es/Andalucía, in Andalusia more and more are being made and the rise is occurring above all with private healthcare resources.
The SAS, before this media revealed that thousands of contracts worth 458 million have been cut up by hand with private entities, had already used an expired legal framework for two years to refer patients precisely to concerted healthcare using the emergency of the pandemic. of Covid-19 to sign contracts by hand without publicity. A legal framework that allowed the regional government to pay to also carry out diagnostic tests in the private sector, citing the needs derived from the pandemic due to the health collapse between January 2021 and June 2023 for a value of 243 million euros. The problem, furthermore, is that the state regulations that protected it expired on May 9, 2021 and its formula was followed two years and one month after it was repealed.
More investment than ever
Precisely, according to the data obtained from diagnostic tests, in 2021, 2022 and 2023, the majority of diagnostic tests were carried out in concerted healthcare in the last decade: 694,038 in 2021, 741,075 in 2022 and 682,723 in 2023. A notable increase, if compared to 2014, the first in the series analyzed. Then, 253,028 diagnoses were carried out in concerted centers, which represents an increase of 169.82% from then to now.
Comparing the tests carried out in public hospitals, it is observed that in 2014 2.2 million were carried out and in 2023 it rose to 3.3, which implies a 35.36% increase, almost five times less than in the concerted one.
Furthermore, if the associated expenditure is analyzed in the last ten years, it can also be seen that the record of the series analyzed was reached in 2023 with almost 30 million euros in investment by the SAS in private healthcare to carry out these tests. The previous record was in 2022 with more than 24 million euros and in 2021 the 23 million was also exceeded, an investment similar to that of 2019, the first year in which the right governed in Andalusia in democracy with the bipartite between PP and Ciudadanos .
It must be taken into account that the prices paid to perform a diagnostic test have been the same since 2005, the date on which the order that regulates them was established, until they were modified this year. For this reason, the amounts that the Andalusian Government has invested in arranging these consultations for x-rays, analyzes or biopsies allow the data to be contrasted directly, taking into account that each test of this type has a different price and that, for example, while While a breast biopsy costs 45.85 euros, a liver biopsy goes up to 73.36 euros.
The Ministry of Health justifies the increase in contracts for diagnostic tests in that the population, which exceeds 8.4 million people in Andalusia, is increasing, that the bureaucracy to contract with the private sector is less than to increase resources in the public and that the Covid-19 pandemic represented a collapse of care that has had to be resolved using “all available resources.”
Furthermore, although it may seem that the consultations to perform these tests are empty, Health explains that this feeling occurs because these medical activities are carried out “very quickly” and that is why patients do not accumulate. The same health sources remember that there are hospitals like the Virgen Macarena in Seville that carry out diagnostic tests even at dawn.
An upward trend
The analysis of the data also reveals that, currently, two out of every ten diagnostic tests performed at the SAS are done privately and that in 2014 it was barely one in ten. However, since 2015, with the governments of Susana Díaz first and Juan Manuel Moreno later – since 2019 -, the trend has not stopped growing to the benefit of the concerted one. With a slight decrease in 2023, just when the rule by which the Board continued to refer patients to the private sector for diagnostic tests finally fell, taking advantage of the state decree that had been repealed in May 2021.
On the other hand, regarding the tests carried out directly in public hospitals, as already mentioned, if 2.2 million were carried out in 2014, in 2023 the record will be reached with 3.3 million. Something that is explained according to the argument of the collapse of care and population aging that the Ministry of Health defends. In this last decade, 5.6 million diagnostic tests have been performed in the private sector and almost 24 million in the public sector.
Regarding the total expenditure associated with these consultations, SAS data shows that between 2014 and 2023, 2,141 million euros have been allocated to diagnoses with public resources and 227 million with those arranged in private healthcare. Highlighting in the latter case that private investment has been higher during the Moreno governments than in those of Susana Díaz’s PSOE, even during the 2020 confinement.
With all this, the unions of the sectoral table assume that there is a healthcare problem of collapse, which also affects diagnostic tests, but that the solution cannot be through “investing resources in private healthcare”, but rather increasing them in public healthcare. . The means available to the population of Andalusia to access these diagnoses should be primarily those of the SAS and not those that are agreed upon.
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