The Minister of Health, Mónica García, has held the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and the Health Counselor, Fátima Matute, responsible for "lying" about the waiting lists of the Ramón y Cajal University Hospital. Furthermore, she has pointed them out for "harassing" and "insulting" the doctor from this center who reported the alleged alteration of said records.
Her words come after the information disseminated by 'El País' last Tuesday and expanded this Saturday with an audio about alleged internal orders at the Ramón y Cajal Hospital to change the priority of certain surgical interventions.
After an event of her party in Madrid, the also leader of Más Madrid has reproached before the media that, "far from investigating whether it is true that the waiting lists are being falsified, manipulated, or tampered with," the regional government has opted to "investigate the whistleblower," something she considers an "aggravating" factor in the situation.
"I want to remind Mrs. Ayuso that there is a whistleblower protection law, under which one cannot be harassed, one cannot be insulted, which is what we have seen Mrs. Ayuso do. Far from investigating whether it is true that the waiting lists are being falsified, manipulated, or tampered with, what has been done is to investigate the whistleblower," the minister has emphasized.
García has reiterated that these alleged alterations would respond to "economic interests" organized "systematically and programmatically from the Health Department to provoke that patients go to the private sector with private insurance or that they go to Quirón."
Criticism of health management in Madrid
For the head of Health, this episode illustrates an "absolutely indecent" situation in public health in Madrid, where, as she has denounced, there is a Department that establishes "incentives for cheating on the waiting lists" and that "is more concerned with seeing how that pool of waiting lists can be transferred to Quirón than in really solving the clinical problems of patients."
In this line, he has highlighted that his Ministry has been "working for months with the autonomous communities" to reform the Royal Decree of 2003, which he has described as "obsolete," in order to provide "transparency and traceability" to the waiting lists. He has recalled, however, that the Popular Party "has opposed," and has asked it to "react and realize that it governs for the patients, not for its own statistics or to fill the boxes of Quirón."
"We are going to change that Royal Decree so that we do not hear any statement of this kind again, so that no professional who reports it is attacked again, and so that those audios we heard some time ago from a CEO, also from a private hospital in Madrid, who said that the waiting lists were going to be manipulated to be able to make money, do not occur again. This is absolutely indecent and I insist again, Mrs. Ayuso and Fátima Matute are lying, it doesn't matter when you read this," he added, referring to the case of the Hospital de Torrejón de Ardoz.
Response from Ayuso and the Ministry
On the other hand, the Madrid president reproached on Thursday in the control session of the Plenary of the Assembly that the left gives "lessons on waiting lists," and maintained that it was the very complainant who "manipulated the appointments." Matute expressed herself in the same line on Wednesday, stating that it was the very complainant doctor who "irregularly manipulated the waiting lists" in 57 specific cases.