In the run up to the local and regional elections, there was a lot of focus on the deficiencies at Torrevieja Hospital, after the management model was reverted by the previous ruling socialists to being publicly run, rather than by the private firm, Ribera Salud.
Many people saw the reversion as a disaster, on account of how well the hospital was running in the private / public partnership, even those against privatisation could not deny how well it worked in Torrevieja, and how badly it is running now, since that change, which prompted a lot of criticism, including politically, against the then President of the region, Ximo Puig.
However, those who transferred their votes from the PSOE to the PP in the hope that the situation would be reversed will now be disappointed, as the party now in power has confirmed that they have no intention of doing so.
The Minister of Health, Mariano Gómez, has completely denied that the cancellation of the already reverted hospitals of Torrevieja and Alzira is on the table.
In this sense, the minister has indicated that he has commissioned an audit of the health system and that said report will mark his roadmap in the Community. In this regard, he has advanced that, “surely, it will be necessary to reinvent the health map and couple the portfolio of services between hospitals based on the needs of citizens. All this with the aim of making the system more efficient”.
The reason for the statement is that their new political partners, although nationally being distanced due to their controversial policies and the potential cost that has had to them leading the government, Vox, tabled a notion precisely for the reversal of the management situation.
The PSOE subsequently denounced that the PP-Vox tandem in the Valencian Community is already working to return to health privatizations. “They want clients instead of patients and to go back to doing business with the health of the Valencians,” says Rafa Simó, socialist spokesman for Health in Les Corts.
Simó affirms that “the ultra-right is presenting motions in the municipalities of Vega Baja asking for the privatisation of public health and departments such as Torrevieja.” In this sense, the Socialist deputy points out that “these initiatives demonstrate that the Consell PP-Vox is a government at the service of the interests of private companies” and insists that “the ultra-right has become the executing arm of the Partido Popular of Carlos Mazón”.
“What we suspected is happening: the only road map of the Government of Mazón for health is privatisation, they do not want to recover the concessions that end shortly, such as Dénia or Manises and, in addition, return to private hands the services reversed by Ximo Puig to the public,“ he emphasizes.
Likewise, Simó has valued the public investments of the Torrevieja hospital in equipment, infrastructure and personnel that were promoted by the Consell of Ximo Puig, which amount to €2,519,640 since 2019. Filing to mention the staffing problem that the situation caused, and investment in equipment is useless with nobody to operate it.
The spokespersons of the VOX political party of Torrevieja, Guardamar, Orihuela, San Miguel de Salinas and Pilar de la Horadada, far from appeasing the situation, published a statement in which they demand from their respective municipalities “the need to urge the Generalitat Valenciana and to the Ministry of Health and Consumption to promote a public tender for the management of the Torrevieja Hospital through an administrative concession as soon as possible”.
Said need, they say, arises from “the disastrous results at the level of efficiency in the provision of services to the citizen that has been occurring in recent years, since it began to be managed directly by the Ministry of Health.”
