The Minister of Health, Antonio Gómez Caamaño, has underlined this Wednesday in the Parliament of Galicia that the palliative care unit of the Piñor Hospital, integrated into the Ourense University Hospital Complex, has the adequate resources to provide "the best care with the maximum guarantees".
The health official thus responded in the plenary session to an interpellation from the PSdeG deputy, Carmen Rodríguez Dacosta, who had criticized that this ward does not have "sufficient resources" and presents "serious deficiencies that directly affect the quality of care".
According to the socialist parliamentarian's denunciation, "there is no access to basic services such as radiology, laboratory or transfusions. There is no structured psychological support for patients or, of course, for families. There are no adequate spaces for accompaniment or for grief, and basic conditions of comfort and privacy are not guaranteed".
Faced with these accusations, the minister detailed that, due to renovation works in the Ourense hospital complex, the Sergas opted to set up a ward at the Piñor Hospital for minimum care hospitalization in internal medicine and for palliative care, in order to ensure its operability in adequate conditions.
Gómez Caamaño indicated that this care reorganization also responds to a need detected in healthcare, aimed at improving the response to patients and relieving pressure on services that care for people who do not require acute care.
The minister emphasized that all admissions to this center are carried out following a "strict patient referral protocol", which, he argued, guarantees that all hospitalized individuals in Piñor have the maximum guarantees from a medical point of view.
Likewise, he specified that the new hospitalization ward has a provision of 29 beds for minimum internal medicine care for patients with specific pathologies, and nine beds reserved for palliative care, distributed in single and double rooms depending on the needs of each case.
Gómez Caamaño has added that the referral of patients is governed by internal medicine criteria and that in this ward, people with an already established diagnosis are treated, who require nursing care but without foreseeable clinical worsening, without the need for additional tests or examinations or active oncological treatment.
"The patients are perfectly cared for by magnificent professionals," concluded the head of Sanidade, vindicating the work of the staff working in the Piñor ward.