Isabel Gómez, an oncology patient with metastases, has been receiving the same response for two months every time she goes, calls or writes to her hospital and requests an endocrine check-up appointment to monitor some malignant nodules that she had scheduled for January: there are no doctors. The last time was this Thursday; the previous one, on January 3. “The service is in trouble and they are not being able to assign appointments,” they told him then. The center is the Torrejón university hospital, managed by the private group Ribera Salud, and serves a population of more than 150,000 inhabitants of the public network of five Madrid municipalities.
A hospital spokesperson admits that the center was without endocrinologists in its facilities for 10 days in November after a cascade of departures: “a maternity leave, a transfer and the departure of a professional.” If an admitted patient required the attention of this specialist, the advice of doctors from other company hospitals was used, who met with the internist even if they did not undergo an in-person consultation, explains the same spokesperson.
Scheduled appointments were temporarily suspended, except for some teleconsultations. Two months later, the hospital assures that it has two part-time doctors “doing two or three agendas a week,” which is not enough to recover normal activity: “From the first moment everything necessary has been done to try meet the needs of patients and recover postponed appointments.” Now, everything delayed must be rescheduled and there is a time limit.
“I have the review this January but I don’t have an answer. I make an appointment and they tell me that they don’t know anything, that I should report it,” says Gómez, who presented a claim to the hospital this Thursday. Despair has been gaining ground as its review date approaches. “Apart from what I already have, which is not little, this situation makes me feel very bad physically and mentally,” says the 60-year-old woman, for whom the check-ups she has had for four years are essential to confirm that the nodules have not grown.
In the health centers associated with the hospital, patients who needed to be referred to a specialist were also informed that there were no appointments available, according to another testimony collected by elDiario.es: “They gave us the paper of free choice of hospital. We had a consultation in the fall, it was canceled and until today.” This situation has not been resolved either despite the fact that there are already two doctors in the service. They are joined by a third who has always been there: the nutritionist.
Three companies in 12 years
The Torrejón hospital is part of the public hospital network of the Community of Madrid but its management has been indirect since its creation, 12 years ago. The company responsible for the operation is the Valencian company Ribera Salud, which initially took charge of management, then transferred it to Sanitas and Asisa, to return to it again in 2018. The model, devised by former president Esperanza Aguirre, is identical to that followed by the three Madrid hospitals that depend on Quirónsalud: Villalba, Rey Juan Carlos (Móstoles) and Infanta Elena (Valdemoro).
Sources within the staff assure that the Torrejón hospital has been supporting a heavy healthcare burden for years – the population has been growing – and has changed hands several times. The endocrinology service was always very short on doctors: “It was such a volume and pressure that people couldn’t stand it and there came a time when there was only one person left to do the work of two and he left.” This version does not coincide with the one offered by the hospital, which assures that before the exit cascade there were three endocrinologists in the service. The Ministry of Health, consulted by this means, refers to the explanations given by the hospital center.
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