The Asociation The patient advocate received in 2022 a total of 288 complaints for alleged medical negligence in Canary Islandswhere the surgical waiting list is “clearly overflowing” and is the third worst in the country, with the highest delay times in the last 20 years.
The data are included in the report published this Monday by this association, which this year celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary and where it specifies that 31 of the cases that the Canary Islands bring together have been deaths. These figures represent a decrease of 5% in the number of complaints received.
The figures are relevant because the Canarian community once again registers the lowest number of complaints in the last decade, adds the Patient Ombudsman, who points out that of the total complaints received, 159 correspond to the province of holy cross of Tenerife and 129, to that of the palms.
The most denounced hospitals are the University Hospital of the Canary Islands (HUC), in Tenerife, the Insular-Maternal and Child Hospital and Doctor Negrín, both in Gran Canariaand Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, also in Tenerife, followed by Doctor José Molina Orosa, in Lanzarote.
Regarding the claims for specialties and services, the most reported are emergencies, waiting lists, general surgery, traumatology and gynecology and obstetrics.
Waiting list “overflowed”
But “the measuring stick of the moment” in which the Canarian health system finds itself lies in the surgical waiting list, obviously overflowing, the worst in the entire country behind Catalonia and Aragon, with 144 days to go through the operating room, which is interpreted to be above the national average, warns the Patient Advocate.
In 2022 there were 32,918 canaries on the aforementioned list, that is, 5,419 more patients than in 2021, a “more than eloquent review” that reveals the highest delay times in the last 20 years, he adds.
The patients who remain “stuck” for the longest time on the list are found in Traumatology, Ophthalmology and General Surgery and the Ombudsman indicates that the “Plan Aborda” promoted by the Department of the area, and staffed with 1,520 more professionals, despite the fact that surgical activity has increased by 15%, it has not been enough to absorb demand and neutralize the impact that the pandemic has caused on waiting lists.
The Achilles heel of health in the Canary Islands is found in several hospital emergency services, such as those of the Insular and Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria hospitals and, regarding the first, he points out that it has been collapsed for a large part of the year “being a constant the beds through the corridors with patients piled up due to the lack of space, the result of an erroneous organizational management justified by the lack of beds”.
At the Hospital de La Candelaria, he continues, the situation has reached such a point that the nursing professionals published a “desolate” apology letter, addressed to the patients, for not being able to provide safe, dignified and quality care.
“It is obvious that the infrastructures are insufficient and are more than saturated but, as in the Peninsula, the Primary Care of the archipelago is in a process of decomposition, since it continues with insufferable waits and scarce resources as a result of one of the communities with lowest ratio of doctors in Spain (less than one physician per thousand inhabitants)”, criticizes the Patient Ombudsman.
Consequently, the lack of immediate response from Primary Care is the main cause of hospital emergency services collapsing in the Canaries, and the association adds that the enormous structural deficit of specialists is another of the fissures in the Canary Islands Health Service, Especially in Oncology.
The pandemic “has taught us that we need more and better resources” but it cannot be the justification for the health crisis suffered by many communities, continues the Ombudsman, who assures that “the hangover” of the COVID-19 It leaves a health system throughout the country “on a war footing due to the lack of personnel and the overwork of many professionals, especially in Primary Care, which has led to the calling of several strikes.
He is also concerned about the rise of telecare, since it entails great difficulty in diagnosis and endangers the health of patients, for which reason he considers that it seems that the political leaders are orchestrating a low-cost health model “trying to maximize performance with the minimum possible expense” and therefore considers that “Spanish public health is on the way to extinction”.
