According to the Valencia Minister of Health, Miguel Mínguez, the government has “a fairly well-configured strategic plan for a month and a half”, to deal with the problems at Torrevieja hospital, the problem is that “in the vacation months it is very difficult to implement”, even though they have had a year to do so.
He also states that the Medical Director, Juan Carlos Toral, didn´t resign from his post, as widely reported, as “It is not a resignation, he already told us several months ago that his commitment was for one year and ends at the end of this month.”
The Minister stated in a press interview that the strategic plan will be implemented “approximately at the end of October”, that is, a year after having taken the reins of the Department of Health and after the chaos generated in the Emergency Room, the increase in waiting lists, the worsening of patient care, and the considerable reduction in the motivation of health workers.
Mínguez also assured that “there has already been a decrease in the waiting list of patients treated in the Emergency Department” and has added that “the waiting list precisely in Torrevieja in terms of surgical delay is better than in other departments”. He perhaps failed to recognise the fact that the summer season is now over, therefore there is a considerable reduction in the number of people in Torrevieja, and an inevitable reduction in the number of those requiring health care.
The head of the public health of the Valencian Community has been “absolutely convinced that with the implementation of the strategic plan that supposes a change in the structures -fundamentally emergency and hospitalisation and diagnostic tests- in a few months we are going to see a significant difference, improving all the points and all the health indicators”, he concluded.
