“Medical examinations are mandatory when they are essential to evaluate the effects of working conditions on the health of workers,” according to Article 22 of the Occupational Risk Prevention Law. In the Community of Madrid, the vast majority of public workers do not have access to an annual medical check-up.
Specifically, the Ministry of Finance, in charge of the prevention of occupational risks of the 102,215 public employees and officials of Justice, Education and regional general administration – health workers are not included in the group and have their check-ups separately – performs a medical examination on 10 % of the population that is entitled each year. That is, every year 90% of its workers are left out. In 2023, for example, 10,025 checks were carried out. The previous year, 9,703.
The service has been outsourced since 2014. The last contract that went out to tender was in 2021 and the winner was Quirón Prevention, which also won the tender in 2018. The system is not that the public administration makes a general appeal to its workers, as happens for example in private companies. In the Community of Madrid, it is the workers who contact the General Secretariats to request recognition, according to a response sent by the Ayuso Government through the Transparency Portal. Normally there is a notice from your unit (for example, a school secretary). Whoever is interested, expresses it by email.
From there, the administration centralizes the requests and forwards them to the contracted company, Quirón Prevention – known in the media for being a subsidiary of Quirón, the main healthcare provider in Madrid, as well as the main payer of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner. What happens if there are more requests than planned checks? “The screening is done by the company based on all the requests received, prioritizing people who have not had a medical examination for the longest time,” Treasury sources explain.
The reason why it would be necessary to screen is that the Community of Madrid has calculated a budget to carry out 10,000 tests at a rate of 469,000 euros per year, as stated in the contract published on the official contracting portal: “Since 2014, which was the first medical examination contract, it has been seen that the number of tests reasonably adjusts to the requests received. In the event that there are more requests, it can be increased but this has not been the case,” the same sources conclude. Some sources, such as the CCOO teaching section, do not see it the same way. In fact, They released a statement in which they complained that the recognitions did not reach everyone education workers, the most numerous along with healthcare workers. From Quirón Prevention they point out that it does not usually reach 10,000 (in 2021 that figure was exceeded) and they point out that, when a worker is summoned and does not show up, the service is not billed.
“The problem is that sometimes you don’t even realize that you have to ask for it, there are years when they send notice and years when they don’t. In fact, I have requested it some year and they have not responded to me and I have had to insist,” says a Community Education worker in telephone contact. Other workers at different educational stages consulted by elDiario.es agree that requesting a medical check-up is not encouraged, that it changes or that often no response is received.
The teaching unions in the Community of Madrid denounce the randomness in the management of recognitions. From the CCOO Madrid Education delegation they explain that there are “centers in which it has been offered and carried out for at least two consecutive years and even more, while others have not had their staff summoned for even five years.”
For her part, Teresa Jusdado, Secretary of Education at UGT Madrid, points out that they have received a couple of dozen complaints from their members because “many years go by without them receiving an appointment.” Along the same lines, Miguel Ángel González, head of teaching at CSIF, affirms that it is not widespread in his sector to take these tests.
To address this issue, the new agreement of the sectoral table for officials of the Community of Madrid establishes that “once a year a medical examination will be carried out for all personnel who request it.” Likewise, to meet this objective, the administration undertakes to adopt “the necessary information and dissemination measures.” Although the text was published this Monday in the regional bulletinthis paragraph was already included in the previous agreement.
Another problem with only tendering tests for 10% of the workforce is the waiting times, according to González. In his case, after making an appointment, he had to wait around ten months to be able to take the tests.
For Encarnación Abascal, national secretary of Occupational Risk Prevention of CSIF, the percentage of the workforce that covers the Community with its tender “is a very low proportion.” Both she and other specialists consulted by elDiario.es defend that those workers who are not being offered this service have the right to claim it from the administration. They also remember that with a more widespread health surveillance plan among its staff, the Community “could have more tools to know if the working conditions of its staff are optimal,” as concluded by Rubén Elizalde, professor of Business Economics at the Open University of Catalonia.
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