Quirónsalud is known to receive a very generous income from the Madrid public health system. Their number is approaching 1,000 million annually, as revealed by the newspaper EL PAÍS this year, thanks to increased bills due to patients fed up with the waiting list. What no one has noticed is that the health workers who make this highly lucrative work possible see themselves as exploited, according to criticism from Comisiones Obreras, the majority union in the company’s Madrid region, which on Wednesday began a mobilization campaign that will continue until after Christmas. Employees want increased company income to translate into salary improvements.
About a hundred people gathered yesterday afternoon at the main door of Villalba Hospital in the first of four protests announced in the coming weeks. The Madrid president and her friend, an adviser who pays Quiron hundreds of thousands of euros a year, were the subject of anger with chants such as: “The Quiron group is Ayuso and its management” or “Alberto Quiron leaves us without a kidney.”
CC OO complains that two things have increased over the years, the number of patients treated in public hospitals run by Kiron and the money paid by the company, but the third factor, their salaries, has not risen to the same level. The grievance situation is greater in three hospitals governed by the Collective Agreement for Private Health Care – Villalba, Valdemoro and Rey Juan Carlos de Mostoles – with fewer work benefits than those in place in the other 30 hospitals of the Madrid Health Service (SERMAS). In the case of the fourth public hospital run by Quirón, the Jiménez Díaz Foundation, the agreement is the same as Cermas, but the CC OO ensures that new employees have access to private sector conditions.
Thus, a nurse and a doctor in the pure public sector earn on average 2,200 and 3,500 euros net per month and in the public sector managed by Quirón 1,400 and 2,000 euros, according to CC OO.
Double standards occur in other aspects of work such as vacation pay, the ratio of workers per bed, or the lack of improvements based on seniority. “On December 31 I will work for an extra 38 euros, but in the public sector they will pay me more than double for making this shift,” nurse Federico Gatto complained to journalists covering the demonstration.
The conflict has erupted in some hospitals where the number of outpatients treated is increasing year after year, and for this Quiron receives additional fees paid by the government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso. In Villalba, which opened in 2014, the number of patients of this type treated annually rose from 7,582 to 33,486. The high waiting list for consultations or tests throughout the region has made these hospitals the main source of reducing these delays, although this decrease is barely noticeable in the figures published monthly on the regional website. As part of this lucrative policy, Kiron Public Hospitals is conducting MRI in a new early morning shift.
“Sold-out” health care.
The focus continued for an hour in Villalba. Dozens of them held their breath as patients entered and exited through the main entrance, many of them without paying attention to the complaints. At the microphone, CC OO spokesperson explained that this protest was in defense of everyone’s health. “Public healthcare is sold cheaply to private companies, including Alberto Quiron,” he said, referring to Alberto Gonzalez Amador, Ayuso’s businessman partner who is at the heart of the political war in Madrid. Amador is being investigated by a court over an alleged half-million-euro bribe to an executive at Quirónsalud Group, which had been employing him for nearly a decade to do consulting.
The microphone’s spokesman, Samuel Mosquera, explained to passers-by the reason for this fight: “The company does not stop making money and these people are increasingly exploited. Part of this responsibility falls on the president of the community,” he added: “We save lives and the company does not stop billing. Many professionals want to be here and cannot even because the company pressures them not to come down.” The hospital has just over a thousand employees. The demonstrators then responded by chanting: “We are not slaves, we are health workers!” and “Sa-ni-ty, public!”
Several workers complained to EL PAÍS that a woman they said was a Quirónsalud employee, wearing a dark suit, was recording them and taking photos. The same woman also asked this reporter if he was a journalist and from which media outlet.
Yesterday’s protest will be followed by another protest next Tuesday at 11:00 at the gates of the Rey Juan Carlos Hospital in Mostoles. CC OO plans to continue after Christmas with two more undated marches, in Valdemoro and the Jiménez Díaz Foundation, located in the capital.
Mosquera says workers have been trying to improve their conditions for many years. In 2021, they wrote a letter to Health Minister Enrique Ruiz Escudero, which according to him was never responded to. In 2023 and 2024, they sent letters to the company and finally started negotiations that began in March of this year and that the company ceased operations in July, according to Mosquera. “We went into conflict because we had no other way,” he says.
The Ministry of Health referred this newspaper to the company under the pretext that it was a purely commercial matter. Quirónsalud emphasized that the ideas that this hospital is very profitable and that the company is selfish are wrong. A hospital spokesman confirmed the following: “During 14 years of running this hospital, workers’ salaries increased by 50% even though per capita income did not increase and despite the fact that medicines and treatments became more expensive.”
The agreement by which the workers of Villalba, Valdemoro and Rey Juan Carlos are governed is an agreement for the entire private sector and can be improved through specific agreements for each company. CC OO says private health companies like Sanitas have given their employees better conditions this way and is asking Quirón to do the same. Nurse Federico Gato expresses a complaint shared by many in Villalba: “We cannot be, employees of a public hospital, subject to the same agreement as a dental clinic with four employees, with all due respect to that clinic.”
Discontent is also growing among the populations served by these hospitals. Delays have increased in recent years with the increasing number of outpatients. There is widespread suspicion that the company has two waiting lists, a fast one for patients from abroad, for whom it gets a premium, and a slower one for local residents, whom it has to serve without extra income. One of the protesting neighbors, Maria Luisa Gomez, complained that “those coming from abroad are given an appointment immediately, but if you are from here they put you on another list.”
Residents of Villalba and surrounding areas claim that the company also sends locals to the operating rooms of the Jiménez Díaz Foundation, in the capital, where they suspect Quiron of paying more bills. It happened in June to a resident of Becerril de la Sierra, Pedro Manuel Antón, 67 years old. This retiree joined the health workers to shout out loud: “I only want people with a decent salary to take care of me!”
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