On October 27, 2022, just one year ago, the Executive chaired by Isabel Díaz Ayuso launched a new model of eighty Continuing Care Points (PAC), after the cessation of the activity of the Rural Care Services (SAR). and the Primary Care Emergency Services (SUAP) that she herself promised to solve.
Of the eighty points, now called Care Continuity Centers, 49 would have complete teams made up of a doctor, nurse and caretaker, while 29 would only offer nursing care. The El Molar Out-of-Hospital Emergency Center and the Alcalá de Henares First Aid Center would complete the network, without experiencing any change in staffing.
The regional government’s plan sparked widespread political, union and social rejection and was the seed of the mobilizations in defense of public health in the region that marked the end of the last legislature. And now, a year later, health unions and opposition parties have verbalized a verdict that thousands of patients have been denouncing for twelve months both in the centers and on social networks: It is “a failure” due to the lack of professionals to care for to the needs of the population, who choose to go to hospital emergencies and leads to the “saturation” of these services at different times.
In the political arena, the spokesperson for Más Madrid, Mónica García, considers that it has been confirmed that it was a “sloppy, chaotic and improvised plan.” “No one thinks of putting a box with a defibrillator without the defibrillator inside,” García exemplified in the corridors of the Assembly after criticizing that of the 80 “promised” points, “many” do not have a complete team – medical, nurse and caretaker.
For his part, the general secretary of the PSOE-M, Juan Lobato, has lamented that “millions of families have lost quality of life” with this model because the “old-time” doctors “are no longer there.” “Before, we could go at two in the morning with our children’s ear infection, or our parents who had high blood pressure, they could go there to solve that problem, and today not anymore,” described the socialist, who has asked to make a “reflection” of why in Madrid in 2023 “instead of getting better, it gets worse.”
The Amyts union promoted a doctors’ strike due to the “chaos” in out-of-hospital emergencies for ten days, from November 7 to 17, 2022, which was called off after an agreement between the regional Administration and the strike committee.
The general secretary of Amyts, Ángela Hernández, confesses that she has “an ambivalent feeling” because, on the one hand, it was possible to keep fourteen Rural Care Services (SAR) open that were going to be closed, with a staff adjustment to the low, but, on the other hand, the Ministry of Health continued with 29 centers without complete equipment.
“We find it very serious that there is a center that the population perceives as emergency and not continuity or care and that is open without a complete team, without a doctor,” says Hernández.
According to the general secretary of Amyts, the agreement is not being fulfilled because Amyts insisted that all out-of-hospital emergency centers have complete equipment to “not deceive the population”, but in the agreement to end the strike there were 29 centers on which the union could not act because the Administration was going to dedicate them to nursing care.
The spokesperson for CCOO Sanidad Madrid, Sergio Fernández, emphasizes that the Executive’s plan meant the cessation of the activity of the Rural Care Services, which were in operation, and the Primary Care Emergency Services, which had been closed since March 2020.
Fernández specifies that between 25% and 35% of the Continuing Care Points that should have a doctor, usually do not have a doctor, so the population goes to the hospital emergency room, which causes the “saturation” of these services, with care “peaks” in summer and winter.
The General Director of Care, Almudena Quintana, specifies that since they were launched on October 27, 2022, the Continuing Care Points have treated almost 700,000 patients, the majority – 56% – by nursing, which “endorses the model of the Community of Madrid.”
These devices, integrated into Primary Care, have 788 professionals distributed in 53 Continuing Care Points with a doctor and the rest with nursing staff.
The implementation of the PACs was agreed upon at the Health Sector Roundtable and was done after a team, made up of twenty-four professionals from both the former SAR and SUAP and Primary Care, analyzed how the reopening was going to be carried out. adds the general director.
For Quintana, “the model is working, it absolutely responds to the needs of the patients, as the figures show, and the result is satisfactory.”
