This Thursday, the Col legi de Metges de Lleida opened its new headquarters, at number 41 Rovira Roure Street, a facility that has 36 apartments for mainly resident doctors, a pioneering formula in Spain.
“We wanted to build this apartment building, hand in hand with Mutual Médica to seek to attract and fix talent in the city, make it a more attractive destination for doctors, in short, put Lleida on the map,” stated the president of the Col ·legi de Metges ee Lleida, Ramon Mur.
The Moroccan Kenza Jinat is one of the resident doctors who will rent one of these apartments at the beginning of May. She studied at the Complutense University of Madrid and will do the digestive system residency at the Arnau de Vilanova University Hospital in Lleida. It starts on May 7.
“When I went to school, they told me that they had rental apartments for residents in a new building. They are very good and well located very close to the hospitals, it is very good for us,” she says.
The apartments are furnished, have 30 square meters, cost about 700 euros to rent including water, electricity and internet costs and are owned by Mutual Mèdica to which 70% of the members belong.
The building occupies 4,000 square meters, 1,100 for rooms and activities and 1,800 for apartments. It was built in 20 months and cost seven million euros, of which 69% is paid by the mutual insurance company (the four floors of apartments) and the other 31% the school.
“Lleida suffers when there is a lack of doctors, with 38% of the surface of Catalonia and only 7% of the population it is difficult to find professionals, especially in the Pyrenees area,” the president insisted.
The final idea is, according to the president, that it is not a long-term apartment but that it serves as a landing spot and is also used by doctors who work in other provinces and spend part of their day in Lleida or by professionals who work in the Pyrenees and they can spend half a day in the city”
In the presentation of the new headquarters, Mur has recognized difficulties in filling the vacancies in the specialty of Family and Community Medicine and has considered that it is necessary to strengthen it to make it more attractive to new generations of professionals and has demanded planning for the needs of the sector and has proposed a “courageous” reform in primary care to create the Anglo-Saxon figure of the ‘medical assistant’, to which the “administrative” work of physicians can be derived to free up doctors’ time for healthcare.
The headquarters has a reception and service space for members, offices, a meeting room for training and presentations, a social and restaurant area, a multipurpose training room with capacity for up to 100 people, and a co-working space. , in addition to an area called Casal del Metge, which will be able to host professional and leisure events.