The manager of the Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital in Santander, María Dolores Acón, presented her resignation this Tuesday, a week after some of her statements sparked controversy. Specifically, Acón stated that he did not believe the data on Cantabria’s health waiting lists and defended that there is a “hidden” agenda to “maintain” them, targeting political parties and unions, among others.
It was during the first day of the XVI Global Meeting of Health Directors organized by Medical Writing, where Acón participated, along with other hospital managers, in a round table on the new waiting list law. In his speech he commented that the Ministry of Health’s data on waiting lists “as we well know, are outdated.” “If I don’t even believe those of my own autonomous community, I can’t believe those at the national level,” he said.
In this sense, Acón regretted that there was no “frank” commitment to having “reliable” information systems that allow us to have an agile, dynamic information repository at the moment. And he questioned the criteria by which patients are included in these waiting lists, alluding to “excess production.” “We always come up with the same alternative formulas: self-concertation (the peonadas) or referral to concerted centers.”
For the former manager of Valdecilla, putting legal limits on waiting lists is “a mistake” and pointed out the existence of “hidden agendas” that are not welfare-related. He mentioned the “political” agendas, because “they need to continue having issues to have throwing weapons”; the unions, who “are interested in having a perpetuity of lines to be able to continue incorporating more needs and increases linked to the need to maintain waiting lists”; and even professional associations, “which also have something to do with this”, as well as scientific societies, which “many times dictate a series of recommendations that prevent the incorporation of specialties with a versatility that would allow certain waiting list situations to be unblocked.” ».
Political reactions
The reactions to his words did not take long to arrive. The general secretary of the PSOE of Cantabria, Pablo Zuloaga, demanded that the regional government “declare responsibilities at the highest level” for the “scandal” of “imposing political criteria on medical criteria” in the management of health waiting lists.
For his part, Adón has regretted in statements to Medical Editorial that his reflections have been “misinterpreted.” The Minister of Health of Cantabria, César Pascual, has thanked “the work, dedication and good work” of the now former manager during all the months that she has been in charge of the center. An “excellent management that is confirmed by the multiple awards that the Cantabrian hospital has obtained during the time that Acón has been in charge of it,” Pascual stressed in a statement.
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