Primary care health professionals have been warning about the deterioration of the health system for years, but they were accused of partisanship and their voices were drowned out in the political fray. After the pandemic, however, it was shown that the complaints (lack of investment, abandonment of professionals, excessive bureaucracy, overload, health centers without enough equipment…) were more than true.
And, as usual, all the Health Ministers began to demand from the Ministry of Health measures to increase the number of doctors, a measure that should have been adopted a decade ago (the training time of a specialist doctor ).
Now there is a rush, when it was more than obvious that there is a lack of doctors and many of those who are there leave because of the working conditions. And in the next five years the situation will worsen.
What should be done? In January, a monographic interterritorial council on primary care will address the situation, with solutions that compete with both the Ministry of Health (creating more primary care places, a solution that, as has been said, takes time) and the communities (accreditation of ‘these places).
Some data: with regard to the Specialized Health Training in Family and Community Medicine, there has been a 38% increase in places over the last six years. If you add up all the ones that have been increased, there are almost 3,000 more places. In the 2023-2024 call, there have been 682 more places than in the previous call.
Regarding the rate of accreditation of places, it is very unequal according to the territories: the highest figure is recorded in Extremadura, with an accreditation rate of 9.25 places per 100,000 inhabitants, a figure that practically triples the community which has the fewest, Madrid, with 3.76 places per 100,000 inhabitants.
And in the middle, some proposals to address the situation in the short term. The World Health Organization (WHO) proposes to extend the retirement age until there are enough doctors. But the current team of the Ministry of Health does not believe that it is the solution.
This was said a few days ago by the Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla, who assures that Mónica García’s team does not advocate delaying retirement until the age of 72. Sanitat’s priority is to improve the working conditions of professionals instead of “squeezing professionals” beyond working life.
“We believe that, in general terms, our way is not to squeeze professionals beyond their age, which, let’s say, make almost literally a job for life, but we must manage to improve the conditions so that the professionals they stay”, affirms Padilla.
The Secretary of State, who is also a family doctor, defends the need for healthcare professionals to have “the ability to retire when they reach retirement age after a lifetime dedicated to medicine”.
However, Padilla recalls that the ministry has put in place measures such as the enhanced active retirement program, which allows family and pediatric doctors to continue working after retirement with a kind of reduction in working hours that makes it compatible half the salary with 75% of the pension under specific conditions and for a specific duration.
Sanitat is committed to encouraging young doctors to “stay” in primary care and this line seems to be in line with measures that some communities have already announced, such as offering two or three-year contracts to MIRs when they finish their training in primary care The goal, in Padilla’s words, is to get them to “not abandon primary care”.
