another summer with scarce templates, tight and with a MIR promotion that “will be used” to patch up those black holes in the health map of primary care centers. “In summer We are going to have a coincidence of only 30% of the templates. This represents an important healthcare challenge. We go towards the supersaturation“. In this way he underlines Joseph Polopresident of the Spanish Society of Primary Care Physicians (Semergen).
The situation is not new and is repeated every year. In January of this year, as EL MUNDO reported, the Collegiate Medical Organization (OMC) prepared an analysis in which it put on the table the peculiarity of vacation coverage this year. To the already accused lack of doctors, it is added that the MIR batch will not be available until September due to the delay caused by Covid.
With all these elements, Health and the communities met yesterday to celebrate a Monographic Interterritorial Council, promoted by the PP regions, on this issue: seeking solutions to avoid a summer without doctors and closures of primary care centers. AND no agreement was reached. Two visions emerged from the appointment. On the one hand, Minister Mónica García summed up the event as “fruitful for those who came to work and not to campaign”; and on the other, the CCAA of the PP who showed their disappointment at the lack of a “clear agreement in the face of the doctors’ crisis that will occur this summer.”
He shortage of doctors It is perceived with greater intensity in summer, especially in tourist areas, “because there is a high displacement of patients, especially chronic patients, who return to their hometowns or simply travel on vacation,” argues Polo. Given that domestic tourism is also an economic source and records are expected to be broken this summer, taking destinations into account also helps in health planning. Thus, in 2023, according to INE data, Andaluca, Catalonia and the Valencian Community were the main destinations. Last year the number of trips by residents in Spain increased by 10%, a volume of potential patients that is not negligible.
Solutions that some CCAA proposed, and that García did not deny, put the MIR from last year, the R4. “They are not cheap labor to use in the summer,” claims the member of Young Doctors and Employment Promotion of the WTO from the WTO. Sunday Sanchez. At the same time, he claims that “on Wednesday we should have put together 17 plans, because we already warned in January that this was going to happen.”
From the PP, its vice-secretary of Education and Health, Ester Muoz, recalls that “it is already known that the Health powers are transferred to the Autonomous Communities, but the power of the MIR, to provide doctors, is one of the few that García has. “.
Of the more than 5,700 MIR who finish their training this year and who will not be available to cover the summer needs of the health system, almost a few 2,500 correspond to Family Medicine and Pediatrician. Although not all of them are in primary care centers, the vast majority are. “This promotion started her residency four months later due to the pandemic and We already knew for four years that this moment would come“says Sánchez, who regrets that everything “sounds typical, but it is a chronicle of a death foretold.”
Polo manifests itself along the same line. “In the end we met the summer recruitment marketing that only serves to ‘steal’ doctors between CCAA for a better economic offer.” In his opinion, neither this nor the MIR are a solution to a structural problem of shortage of doctors “which has been known for years” and which “we face every day, even though it is urgent at this time.”
“The MIR are finishing their training and do not have to being without a tutor in a position that is difficult to fill. Or make that tutor travel with him,” claims Polo, who assures that all of this is a strange “last minute” idea.
PLANS THAT THE AUTONOMOUS COMMUNITIES HAVE IN MARCH
Galicia It is one of the CCAA promoter of the “MIR plan” to face the summer. Its Health Minister, Antonio Gómez Caamao, emphasizes that the autonomous communities have the responsibility “of planning and management” and that, in this way, while the communities prepare their plans for the summer “the Ministry does not say anything.”
“If the doctors’ pools in all the communities are empty, it is clear that the situation is frankly deficient and that is the situation that has been raised to the minister at the national level,” claims the counselor. Balearic Islands, Manuela García Romero.
For his part, the counselor of Castilla-La Mancha, Jess Fernndez Sanzexplained yesterday that, in the community, in response to the Ministry’s request for summer plans, “the region does not have a summer plan, but rather a continuous plan throughout the year, already for nine years.”
In that sense, Fernndez Sanz explained that “we are working to ensure that the Plan responds to contingencies that arise, such as the Christmas holidays, the processes that cause respiratory infections, and we have been implementing and incorporating many measures that have emerged. due to different circumstances, such as the pandemic or the increase in retirements in Primary Care”.
From the Andalusian Governmentthe Minister of Health points out that she is working on the Summer Plan, in which around 32,000 hires. Castile and LeónAt the moment, it has not made public its intentions for the summer period.
He joins them Murcia, which points to this medium that at the end of June they will report on the definitive contracts and plans. And they remember from the counselor that “MIRs can be hired when they finish their training period“The Minister has not given a solution and they end in September.”
Away from all is Basque Country. As the Minister of Health stated yesterday morning, Gotzone Sagardui, The minister’s only objective “was to hold the autonomous communities accountable for the planning of Primary Care services to cover summer services.” The Minister of Health maintains that the management of health care is “the exclusive responsibility of the Basque Government and that it does not have to report to the Ministry of Health.”
What is the responsibility of Ministry of Health, Sagardui recalled, “it is take extraordinary measures related to the MIR calls to fill primary care positions, or with the authorization of the training units of the autonomous communities to be able to train more doctors, or with the creation of the Emergency and Emergency specialty, among others.” In his opinion , these proposals reiterated to successive health ministers in recent years remain unanswered.
From the Ministry of HealthGarcía promised to find a solution to the MIR offer after the request of the communities in the autonomous plenary session. Thus, it will be possible clarify what the MIR will be able to do this summer according to current regulationsalthough he believes that none of the autonomous communities will break the law because he doubts that any of them are willing to “put at risk” the legal security of their professionals.
“The current legislation is very clear“Residents in their final year can exercise more powers, but always under supervision, not tutoring, because they do not need a tutor at their side, an assistant to supervise them,” the minister concluded at the end of the Interterritorial.