To resolve in the short term the enormous waiting list for non-urgent surgeries in Spain – a total of 174,000 patients In June 2024, they had been waiting for six months in the operating room for this type of intervention. National Health System (SNS) should increase its surgical activity by 15%. This is confirmed by the ‘Venturi Project’ Report, carried out for the organization of health professionals the Círculo de la Sanidad based on the official data on the waiting lists published every six months by the Ministry of Health.
According to calculations from the aforementioned Report, this impulse is unacceptable for a public system, which traditionally grows at an average of 1.5% annually, with surgical waiting lists that do not stop increasing and that also do so above activity (+3.4% annually to 848,340 patients in the last period analyzed).
The problem of waiting lists is also greater than the data reflects, according to the Circle of Health in a statement. In this sense, they argue that “the differential of entries and exits (unattended patients) leaves a balance of 300,000 people who have disappeared from the statistics for different reasons: because they are temporarily non-programmable patients, due to rejection of the alternative center or because they are “the wait for specialties that are not analyzed in the report.” «It is also expected, – they add from the entity – that a significant percentage of this volume of patients will once again swell the waiting lists in the future, with a even more serious surgery and expense for the system.”
Another of the most pressing problems is, according to the Health Circle, the huge proportion of subsequent specialized consultationswith respect to the first consultations, something that continues to put a brake on diagnoses, treatments and prescription of surgeries. Only three out of every ten specialized appointments are for first consultation, which generates a volume of four million patients waiting for their first visit to the specialist, of which more than half accumulate a waiting time of more than 60 days.
Given this situation, the Health Circle reiterates its “concern” about the inability of the SNS to respond in time, on its own, to the population’s demand for assistance and requests “an urgent pact of public-private collaboration that allows entities and autonomous communities to address a joint solution to waiting lists with all available means, whether public or private.”
The entity also advocates implementing optimization policies of the flow of interconsultations, to prioritize the first consultations with the specialist in the entire outpatient activity and thus achieve more efficient and equitable care for all patients.
«As it cannot be otherwise, the Health Circle makes itself available to all political actors to collaborate and improve the efficiency of the SNS, in addition to thinking about and promoting initiatives that help solve this serious problem, which is seriously affecting to the whole of society and to the welfare state,” he points out. Angel Bridgepresident of the Health Circle.
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