We are facing a new electoral process in Catalonia that will define a new parliamentary composition and a new government. Beyond knowing what this new scenario will be, the problems and challenges that the health system has posed remain the same: the chronic underfinancing of health, the immobility of a subgovernor of the Administration, the suffocating bureaucracy and the lack of autonomy professionals coexist with the need to strengthen the structures of public health, mental health, intermediate care, teaching, research and innovation and, above all, strong, decisive and prestigious primary care. A different organizational perspective is urgently needed due to the impact of the aging population and the increase in chronicity, and due to emerging challenges such as the effects on health due to climate change. And all this has to be done while maintaining equity, territorial accessibility and guaranteeing quality and clinical safety.
The emergence of the sociodemographic crisis of professionals, which no administration has known how to consider in a preventive manner, has precipitated the imperative need to accelerate, not only the addressing of the more temporary problems mentioned above, but also to push once and for all towards modernization. of our health system.
The basic lines of this modernization are already defined, ultra-written, and well specified in the document prepared by experts 30 measures to strengthen the health system. Concretions in the short, medium and long term. The most important thing is that both the details and the deliberative process have had the consensus of the entire healthcare world: a gift for politicians. And despite being included in what had to be a new National Pact, it has not had time to crystallize through a new electoral call. A proclaimed consensus that has not yet materialized.
In the last 10 years we have had 12 Ministers of Health and 5 Health Ministers. Under these conditions, how to carry out changes that take time? If the objectives are not stabilized and continuity over time is not ensured, it will be impossible to implement any process of transformative change, but on the contrary, the situation leads us to immobility and frustration. We need a long look. We are risking the survival of the quality and excellence of our country’s healthcare. I affirm this emphatically and with concern.
The public service that most helps the social cohesion of the country and that also represents one of the essential drivers of socioeconomic dynamism depends now more than ever on the political determination of the actors –government and opposition–, exercised from generosity and far from tacticism. partisan.
Regardless of who will be in the government and who will be in the opposition, we know that there is a good predisposition for an agreement. The aspiration is not to get a photo to continue doing the same thing. We need an honest and generous consensus, based on complicity and determination, so that basic agreements are transformed into concrete actions. Some will have to be profound and occasionally uncomfortable and, therefore, it will have to be assumed that only through the use of solid and independent evaluation tools – as the most advanced countries have been applying for a long time – and with the leadership of health professionals will it be possible. possible not only to make the essential changes but also for society to adopt them.
