The Socialist Group has registered in the Andalusian Parliament a non-legislative proposal (PNL) with which it intends for the Andalusian Government to be urged to "publish, within a maximum period of three months, a specific, permanent, and easily accessible section on waiting lists in mental health within the public information of the Andalusian Health Service" (SAS).
This is the first of the requests included in the socialist initiative, consulted by Europa Press, in which the PSOE-A demands that the Board incorporate a "quarterly update and disaggregated data by province, health area, center, care device, adult and child-adolescent population, and access to psychiatry and clinical psychology" in the dissemination of waiting list data.
Likewise, the PNL proposes that "this information includes, at a minimum, the number of people pending first consultation, the average, median, and maximum waiting times, the number of people exceeding thirty (30), sixty (60), ninety (90), and one hundred eighty (180) days, as well as the time elapsed between the first assessment and the effective start of the prescribed treatment or intervention".
In the same way, the text proposes that Parliament urges the Council of Government to "publish separately the data on child and adolescent mental health, including the number of minors pending attention, waiting times, territorial distribution, and evolution of waiting lists", in addition to "adopting specific reinforcement measures in those health areas where greater delays or care deficits are recorded".
The Socialist Group also proposes that the regional Chamber demands that the Board "link the data on demand and waiting times in mental health to the planning of staffing, resources, and devices, making public the allocation of professionals by category and territory, adopting corrective measures when care deficits, significant increases in waiting lists, or territorial inequalities are detected".
The proposal adds that these indicators be integrated "into the monitoring system of the Pesma-A --Strategic Plan for Mental Health and Addictions of Andalusia-- 2026-2029, with a semi-annual report to the Parliament of Andalusia on the evolution of waiting lists, territorial differences, the evolution of staffing, the measures adopted, and their degree of compliance".
Exposition of motives
In the statement of reasons, the PSOE-A argues that mental health is "one of the main current challenges of the Andalusian public health system," and that, despite the "relevance acquired" in health planning, public information on response times does not allow for "a simple, periodic, and sufficiently disaggregated understanding of the specific situation of mental health care in Andalusia."
In this regard, the parliamentary group emphasizes that "the very page of the Andalusian Health Service dedicated to response times does not have a specific space that allows for the joint consultation of the situation of mental health waiting lists, differentiating, among other aspects, adult and child-adolescent populations, psychiatry and clinical psychology, territories, care units, or different levels of priority."
For the Socialist Group, "this information is especially relevant, because the historical data published by the SAS itself demonstrate that mental health can and has been the subject of specific measurement."
In the same vein, the PSOE-A maintains that "transparency about care delays is not solely a statistical issue," since "it allows for understanding the system's response capacity, detecting territorial differences, adequately planning the needs for professionals and devices, and evaluating whether the actions planned in the Pesma-A are producing effective results."
For all these reasons, the Socialist Group defends this PNL considering that "it is advisable to move towards a permanent system of public information that allows for an objective, updated, accessible, and comparable understanding of the access times to mental health care in Andalusia and to use this information as a planning, evaluation, and accountability tool."