On October 17, Ángeles Pedregal, a 77-year-old resident of the Madrid town of San Sebastián de los Reyes, pressed the button for the telecare service when she saw that she was feeling unwell. The woman explained to the person who treated her that part of her nose and the central part of her mouth were asleep, and that her upper lip had begun to swell. He also noticed that the symptoms had spread to one arm and that he had no feeling in three fingers on his hand. She was scared, but the operator calmed her down and told her to stay by the phone, and that a doctor would contact her shortly. A while passed and, according to the version offered by her daughter Ángeles Millán to this editorial office, the service called her mother again “but to tell her that the doctor was not going to come nor an ambulance because they did not believe that her symptoms were urgent.” ”. Then they explained that they had already notified one of their daughters—“my sister Montse,” Ángeles points out—who, upon arriving at the home and seeing her mother’s condition, did not hesitate to take her urgently to the health center.
The nightmare is narrated by Ángeles, outraged by the treatment received from the telecare company DomusVi. “It is a service that we pay for, and it is supposed to serve older people in emergency situations.” “My sister, when she saw that no one was going to care for her, took her to the health center where, knowing that she had heart surgery, had hypertension and osteoporosis, they decided that the best thing was to transfer her to the Infanta Sofía Hospital.” “They took great care of her,” says Ángeles.
But when her sister returned from parking the car, they told her that her mother was suffering a stroke, so she was referred to La Paz Hospital, where she was admitted to the stroke surveillance unit with “ischemic lesions in both hemispheres,” according to the report. doctor to whom elDiario.es has had access. She remained there for two days to see the evolution. And once they saw that she was out of danger, they referred her again to the Infanta Sofía, where they did more tests to see if she had any consequences, and they finally sent her home.
Once at home they called telecare to see how their mother was doing. “That’s when we show them our discontent even though we know that the operator does her job and is not to blame for anything,” Ángeles continues. “When you see your mother in danger, you don’t think about getting angry with anyone at that moment, you just want to take her to the hospital as soon as possible. You don’t think about anything else because your head is somewhere else,” he says.
The telecare service was contracted in February of last year through the social services of the San Sebastián de los Reyes City Council, governed by the PP, which has contracted the company Quavitae Servicios Asistenciales SAU, belonging to DomusVi, well recognized in the sector. . “We paid a monthly fee of 15 euros, but after all this we have dropped out,” confesses Ángeles. According to the contract they signed, it is a service aimed at elderly people who live alone and suddenly find themselves in emergency situations. In fact, on the company’s website telecare is advertised as a service “to live at home with the peace of mind of knowing that in the event of a fall or emergency situation, disorientation, loneliness… A team of professionals will look after you” .
“They tell you to press the button in those cases and they make sure a doctor comes or sends an ambulance.” “If my sister doesn’t take her quickly to the hospital, let’s find out how my mother ends up because in fact they saw that she also had a blood clot in her head,” Ángeles laments.
After submitting a claim to the municipal citizen service on October 24, the user was warned that “the claim would be of no use” and that she should not waste energy “because it is not going to go anywhere.” “The company doesn’t want to know anything. They told us that they had done everything perfectly and that if anything we should report it to the city council or the doctor,” says the daughter of the affected woman.
Seeing her anger, the city council tried to calm her down. “With very kind words they told me that they would look at our case and find a solution. But I don’t want a monetary solution. I want to make it clear that this claim is not made for any type of interest, monetary or anything like that, it is so that it does not happen to anyone else, so that older people who are very vulnerable are treated better. “I hire a service to take care of you and I don’t care if they blame each other,” adds Ángeles, who explains that her mother is now at home: “She hasn’t fully recovered, but now she’s very afraid.”
“Why do you have the keys to my house?”
It is not the first time that the same company has been reported for similar situations and in the same Madrid municipality. About a year ago there was another claim for alleged negligence, in this case from an older couple, Natividad Camacho and her husband, Luis José Herrera, 77 years old. She, sick and dependent, saw how her husband was left without care from the same telecare service in San Sebastián de los Reyes after falling to the ground because at that moment “there were no health personnel to care for him, since he was covering another emergency.” as they were told.
The couple resides in the Rosa de Luxemburgo neighborhood and it is Nati who tells in the first person the unpleasant episode she experienced then. “My husband is sick. Since 2018 he has suffered from heart failure and has had several stentit has sugar… in short, it has many pathologies. Due to his delicate state of health he falls very frequently.”
“One night, I seem to remember it was last year around this time, he fell to the ground,” he says. “Since I couldn’t handle him, we called telecare and they told us that they couldn’t come, that they were very sorry, that they only had one person for those cases and that at that moment they were attending to another emergency.” “They informed us that they had called my daughter who lives in Guadalajara. But I told them that it was going to be a long time until my daughter arrived and that I needed someone to help me now,” Nati continues.
“They told us then that they only do telecare and I asked them why they had taken the keys to my apartment then. They answered that it is in case someone can go, but they repeated to me that at that moment it was impossible.” “My daughter came about three quarters of an hour later.” “I filed a complaint with the city council telling me about the case and they explained to me that they had already called my daughter and had complied.”
To Nati, this whole situation, which he describes as “surreal,” seems like “total helplessness.” “They made me understand that I was confused with the company’s obligations, giving the feeling that older people don’t know. The reality is that there is a support network, but it is a lie, everything is hollow,” the woman laments.
In the end her husband did not need to go to the hospital. “The only thing we wanted was help to get him off the ground and see if he had any injuries,” he insists. Shortly after, the city council contacted the company. “Between one another they were throwing balls out without answering our complaint,” adds Nati.
Despite the disappointment suffered, Nati, unlike Ángeles’ mother, has not unsubscribed from the DomusVi telecare service with which she signed a contract last year. “At first we paid 38 euros, but then the Community of Madrid gave us help and now I think we pay 13 euros.” Her husband, who went to a day center, is now in a nursing home. “I have a very unpleasant memory of all this,” Nati ends the conversation. “We have not deleted ourselves in case I need something because I also suffer from my illnesses, but come on, it seems to me that the service is a disaster and a scam.” “It was the first time that we pressed the telecare help button that they had come to install for us in very kind ways… but in the end I think it is a fraud.”
“It is a total helplessness, until you go through it no one imagines it. “You think you have support and you realize that in reality you have nothing.”
The city council refuses to open an investigation
The local independent Izquierda party already brought the first complaint to the committees of the Plenary Session of the San Sebastián de los Reyes City Council without them taking action on the matter. Now he has demanded that the PP Government evaluate the performance of the telecare service and the reasons for this new lack of attention, since “they do not seem to be isolated events.” For this reason, they ask that if the irregularities are confirmed, the contract with the company be sanctioned and even terminated, considering that its actions represent “a breach of contract” and a clear case of “negligence and dereliction of duty.”
As recalled by the spokesperson for this opposition group, Juan Torres, “this type of service exists precisely to address emergency and crisis situations, offering immediate intervention, something that did not happen in any of these cases.” “We are very concerned that next time these negligences will have even more serious consequences,” he concludes.
On December 12, his group addressed a written question to the PP Government to find out if this investigation was going to be opened and, if applicable, to apply a sanction to said company. In the response letter, the Government team denies the accusations about the alleged malfunction of telecare and regrets “the social alarm about this service that may be generated by the interested use of a specific case.”
In addition, it assures that it has “close collaboration and surveillance on telecare in the town and no family can fear for this service that is provided to their elders and that works correctly 365 days a year.” Regarding the facts narrated and collected by this editorial team, the municipal government team believes that it is “a very serious accusation of inattention towards the person by the company that does not correspond to reality.” Finally, they assure that “from minute one they have spoken with the family and the company” without problems.
This editorial team has tried to obtain the version of the telecare company through an email from the press service, as indicated after contacting DomusVi, without receiving any response at the time of writing this report.
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