The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, said upon her arrival in Camara Baja on Saturday that they “will be at the head of the Torrejon Hospital case”, but also that “the audio recordings have been taken out of context” and asked that they be “published in full in honor of the truth because it is a private conversation.” Ayuso, during the Constitution Day proceedings, referred to audio recordings revealed by El País newspaper this week in which we heard Pablo Gallart, CEO of the Ribera Salud group – which has the private management of the public hospital in Torrejon – asking twenty-five managers to climb waiting lists and use their “imagination” to grow benefits for the benefit of patients.
In this regard, the Madrid president insisted: “What I asked in the media is that they think there are internal disputes and why they do not say anything about what is being investigated these days.” According to her, these audio recordings have something to do with “references between directives.” He also emphasized that “it seems good to fire the CEO.” He said: “Before starting the attack, we are opening a new inspection process to join the forty inspections that the hospital has undergone. The waiting times for this hospital are countless, its list has increased and there have been no emergencies so far.”
The audio recordings provide a description of the practices suggested by the CEO of the Ribera Salud Group to his managers. Pablo Gallarte gives instructions to increase waiting lists and select profitable activities to achieve EBITDA of “four or five million euros”. As well as reusing sanitary products that use soil; Catheters are an essential tool in interventional cardiology to diagnose and treat arrhythmias, for example, which can cost more than 2,000 euros.
After the scandal that these orders were supposed to cover, four directors were also supposed to be dismissed who denounced these procedures in the internal ethics channel, warning of the “fragility of patients’ rights” that they assumed. Following the inspection ordered by the Community of Madrid last week, a statement was sent this evening stating that the conclusion behind this internal investigation was that nothing had been received at all, that waiting lists were “not better” and that there was no evidence to suggest the reuse of single-use sanitary products.
Regarding this question that continues throughout the week on the political stage, the Head of Government, Pedro Sánchez, stated during his intervention with the media before the Constitution Law and Article 43 of the Constitution, which talks about the right to public health: “Before the cuts, the increase in the waiting list, as well as the privatizations carried out by the administration of the Popular Party where it governs (…) the Government of Spain will do everything in its power.
“This Article 43 is what must be done to enshrine the right to public health for everyone and in the actions of the few, which always belong to the same companies linked to the administrations of the Popular Party,” Anadido Sánchez said. Monica Garcia, the health secretary, wanted to respond to Ayuso. “The problem is that it is not about the failure of the system, not between the directives. It is the model of the health service in Madrid, which can see the flow from public to private. And behind this flow, 5,000 million went to Quiron and millions of scientists went to Ribera. This is the model of that PP,” García was appointed upon his arrival in Congress.