More Madrid filed a complaint before the Madrid Provincial Inspectorate for the alleged commission of six crimes in the management of the Torrejón Hospital, a center of the public network managed by a private company (Ribera Salud), after publishing EL PAÍS an audio of its CEO, Pablo Gallart, in which he was animated by order of the hospital to have an account in his work reporting the results of the center. “I’m sure you are able to identify which processes do not contribute to the company’s EBITDA (…) and which activities interest us the most,” I said. More Madrid places the diana in the executive of Isabel Díaz Ayuso for the rescue of the 33 million who approved the Community in July, as indicated in this newspaper: he considers that the Administration does not have to face the problems of a concessionaire that operates under a regime of “risk and adventure”. He also accuses the government of failing to act to ensure the proper provision of the service. And this indicates the possibility, denied by Ribera Salud, that patients are victims of discrimination based on profitability.
“We denounce the Community of Madrid before the Fiscalía for having allowed the abuses of Ribera Salud and Quirón,” says Manuela Bergerot, spokesperson for the party at Asamblea. “The terms of Ribera Salud’s contract at Torrejón Hospital and the known instructions to reduce costs and increase waiting lists to protect benefits reveal signs of various crimes, including discrimination in access to a public service, injuries, unfair administration, professional misconduct, administrative malpractice and failure to prosecute crimes,” he says. “Since Esperanza Aguirre (regional president between 2003 and 2012) introduced private management into Madrid’s public health system, Popular Party governments have systematically focused on protecting the profits of private health groups in order to worsen the quality of care in hospitals and health centers,” he says.
In Madrid there are five private hospitals integrated into the public network. Quirón operates four of them: those of Móstoles, Valdemoro and Villalba, under a concession regime, and the Fundación Jiménez Díaz, through a special agreement. Ribera Salud, for its part, operates a center in Torrejón. All these hospitals bill directly for receiving patients from other centers. And this creates a virtuous circle supported by greater availability of clinicians and consultations in the Quirón and Ribera Salud centers: more patients, more money, more investment in clinicians and facilities and, once again, more patients.
The case of Torrejón, a center specializing in childbirth for years, has been at the center of controversy since this newspaper revealed an audio of its CEO, Pablo Gallart, who recorded the content of a meeting held on September 25 with hospital officials.
“In Torrejón, in years 22 and 23, we decided, as an organization, to make an effort to reduce the waiting list. The only thing we did was: let’s do it,” says Gallart, who complained of “making iterations”, that is, adjustments, to “achieve an EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of four or five million”.
“What is our management capacity? Gallart asked. And he replied: “We understand that we are able to determine the activity that we can provide. Or, in other words, by establishing the surgical waiting list, in the end we will determine the activity and, by determining the activity (…), we will determine how much expenses and what level of EBITDA we will tend to have. Everyone knows that the elasticity of the results depends on the waiting list. It’s straightforward.”
Contacted by this newspaper, Santiago Orio, general director of Torrejón Hospital, said: “Ribera has a single project: to offer maximum quality care to patients from Torrejón and the entire Community of Madrid who choose to be treated in our hospital, as well as demonstrating the results of audits from different independent bodies and the archives of the Health Council itself.”
The Community of Madrid reacted to the controversy by sending teams of auditors to the hospital who declared that they had not found any fault in management. The regional administration, through its health advisor, Fátima Matute, even celebrated the dates of the center. Hub, pues, a closed defense of the Madrid health model and the management of the Torrejón hospital.
Criminal offenses
However, Más Madrid considers that “there are clear indications that we could find ourselves facing different criminal offenses”. Y lists six. Among them are professional misconduct, administrative malpractices and the inability to prosecute crimes.
It also raises the possibility of the existence of an “offense committed during the exercise of fundamental rights and public freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution”. Here, the formation of the izquierdas maintains that article 43 of the Magna Carta enshrines “the protection of health as a right and a guiding principle, obliging public authorities to protect and organize public health through preventive measures and necessary services and services”. And he said that, in his opinion, it could be an “act of discrimination against people in access to health care because of their illness or their origin.”
To this end, according to Más Madrid, it was added that it was necessary to clarify whether there was a “crime of injury”. At this stage, the party calls for investigating “whether decisions taken regarding access to certain treatments could result in loss of health or injuries requiring medical treatment in the patients concerned”.
Finally, this is equivalent to an “crime of unfair administration”, because, considers the Bergerot party, “the concessionary company (…) caused damage to the administered public heritage, while the rebalancing of the concession which materialized by the payment of July 2025 on the ground does not seem to have been directed towards its own end, but which brings this benefit the decisions of the concessionary company were oriented towards the search for an economic benefit, against the end of the health provision of the management of the service and, therefore, of the same object of the concession”. An extreme that Ribera Salud denies.
For its part, the Community justified the rescue of the hospital “by expenses not initially envisaged, such as the sharp increase in pharmaceutical expenses for innovative and high-impact drugs which were not initially planned, as well as other nuclear medicine or glucose devices (for diabetic patients)”, according to a spokesperson for the regional government.
Before all this, Más Madrid asks the Fiscalía to make a statement to those responsible for Grupo Ribera Salud and Torrejón Salud, SA, “in particular, D. Pablo Gallart”. What happened to four directives which denounced the measures proposed by the ethical channel. And to file a complaint with the Community of Madrid about all inspections and decisions adopted in relation to this concession since 2022.
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