The future Royo Villanova Hospital in Zaragoza will have "a wide range of services" and is projected as a green and digital center, according to what the Health Counselor of the Government of Aragón, Ángel Sanz, stated this Friday in response to an interpellation from the PSOE deputy María Rodrigo during the Plenary of the regional Cortes.
Sanz emphasized the process of citizen participation carried out to decide the location of the new Royo Villanova university hospital. "This is a historic milestone." "We are talking about the construction of the first public hospital in the city of Zaragoza since the creation of the autonomous community."
He stressed that the aim is to build a center that responds to the needs of current Zaragoza and the coming decades, as well as to the population of its entire reference area. The forecast is that it will be a general hospital "with a wide range of services," a "digital" hospital equipped with cutting-edge technologies, university-based, with a research vocation, green and energetically sustainable, optimizing water consumption, promoting waste recycling, and minimizing the carbon footprint. In addition, it is intended to be an accessible space, barrier-free, and a safe environment "in accordance with the most demanding safety standards."
Objectives of health planning and territorial equity
The counselor explained that the first goal of health infrastructure policy is "to guarantee territorial equity" and ensure access to quality health services, with special attention to rural mountain areas and municipalities affected by depopulation.
Another of the purposes is "that the health network can adapt to future needs," which requires anticipating demographic evolution to respond to the increase in chronicity, dependency, and epidemiological changes.
Likewise, he defended the need to "develop an integrated care model," so that the new infrastructures "must enable coordination in primary care, hospital care, mental health, social health care, emergencies, and public health services."
The fourth major objective is "to promote digital transformation," Sanz emphasized, so that the new centers are conceived "as digital infrastructures, prepared for telemedicine, AI, clinical interoperability, remote monitoring, and advanced data management."
He added that the Department of Health also aims to ensure economic and environmental sustainability, which requires "a rigorous evaluation of construction costs, equipment, maintenance, and operation, incorporating criteria for energy efficiency and reduction of environmental impact."
As Ángel Sanz has specified, his Department is immersed in the planning of health infrastructures in Aragón "for the coming decades." "It is about making a diagnosis of the current situation, updating the health map along with a demographic analysis and needs by health sectors and identifying the necessary investments, as well as the specific indicators regarding health infrastructures."
Strengthening primary care, hospital care, and mental health
In this strategic framework, he indicated, "in this scenario, primary care must constitute one of the priority axes of health investment." Within this line, it is planned to build new health centers "where there is a capacity deficit" and replace those that have become obsolete.
Regarding the hospital network, the roadmap involves modernizing the hospitals in operation, expanding and renewing the technology associated with diagnosis and treatment, increasing surgical capacity, strengthening critical areas, and addressing the reform or construction of new centers, including the Royo Villanova University Hospital.
Concerning mental health infrastructures, the plan includes enhancing day hospitals, community mental health units, resources aimed at the child and youth population, and psychosocial rehabilitation devices, as well as expanding acute units.
In the field of social health care, the counselor has explained that intermediate resources aimed at complex chronic patients, convalescence processes, palliative care, and functional recovery will be promoted.
He emphasized that "every new health infrastructure must be designed under the concept of a smart hospital or health center." In this sense, he focused on the fact that "aspects such as fully digital medical records, high-capacity communication infrastructure, telemedicine systems, intelligent energy management automation, advanced cybersecurity systems, and spaces prepared for artificial intelligence must be incorporated in all care centers."
Likewise, he advanced that "the new actions will incorporate renewable energies, photovoltaic self-consumption, nearly zero-energy buildings, water reuse systems, low environmental impact materials, and resilient infrastructures against extreme climate phenomena." In terms of governance, he argued that "the planning of infrastructures must be supported by mechanisms of citizen participation and also by health professionals."
Political debate on the new hospital center
For her part, María Rodrigo recalled that the Health Council of Aragón chose this Thursday a plot on Ronda de Boltaña street in Zaragoza to build the new Hospital "Royo Villanova" and emphasized that the Autonomous Community needs "adequate infrastructures, equipment, and dignified spaces, but also sufficient, stable teams with appropriate conditions to work."
"Announcing a hospital commits your Government to guarantee that everything inside will work well, not like in the Hospital of Teruel," said Rodrigo, who accused the PP-Vox Executive of turning inaugurations into "an exercise in propaganda and political appropriation of previously done work," adding that "for problems, there is always a socialist legacy" and "to cut the ribbon, it seems that everything started with Azcón."
The socialist deputy has maintained that "the PP is inaugurating infrastructures that were promoted by the PSOE," including the new hospitals of Teruel and Alcañiz, the health center "Fidel Pagés" in Huesca, the new Emergency Department of the San Jorge Hospital in the capital of Huesca, or the pharmacy of the Miguel Servet Hospital in Zaragoza.
Finally, he has asked what investments the Azcón Government has made to reinforce healthcare assistance, what own projects it has launched, what the schedule of actions is, and with which professionals they are going to operate, warning that "healthcare must be guaranteed every day of the year."