They added the rest at the time of greatest overflow of Andalusian healthcare and in the subsequent years in which the healthcare system limped back to a bloated reality. Thousands of doctors, nurses, physiotherapists…they were linked to the Administration through … a reinforcement contract for the coronavirus whose indefinition should be a mere matter of time. For 2,177 professionals The wait ends now, as they become permanent staff of the Andalusian Health Service (SAS).
This is how this newspaper has learned from official sources, which break down this volume of toilets with a majority fit in the Primary Careto the point that there will be 1,828 personnel who provide their service in health centers and 349 who will be inserted in hospitals – all specialists -.
The group with the greatest implementation will be A2, and within this, the nurses, who will total 493. As can be expected, the eFamily and Community specialist nurses will concentrate a high number of contracts (411) although the presence of case nurses. 82, to be exact.
They will be followed in volume by physiotherapists (285), the occupational therapists (100), the speech therapists (75) and the social workers (24). In total, this group of professionals will reinforce the health system with 977 people.
Difficult coverage areas
Family doctors and administrative They imply a similar proportion, with 440 and 411 respectively. Although if the aforementioned specialists in hospitals are taken into account, the number of doctors who will join the permanent staff from the reinforcement situation will be 789.
In fact, these doctors who are now going to be permanently hired not only come to alleviate the complex situation of Primary Care, but will also be incorporated as far as possible into healthcare centers in difficult coverage areassince that is where the most significant cases of personnel shortages usually occur.
The staff expansion will mean 142.7 million euros annually to the SAS budget. This item includes another 205 new job contracts that contemplate the specific management of the machinery and the equipment that the Board has been acquiring in recent months to expand the diagnostic testing agenda.
Although they will mainly be incorporated senior health technicians —131, that is, 64 percent of the total— there will also be room for 38 nurses, 20 doctors and 16 workers from various categories such as administrative staff or guards.
Summer and other needs
Until this May 20, of the 20,000 healthcare professionals who had initially worked as reinforcement during the pandemic in Andalusia, 6,940 were still not assimilated as permanent personnel.
According to Administration sources, there have already been two previous ‘indirect’ absorptions. The first, with the 8,000 jobs that, although they were not renewed at first as reinforcement, ended up being part of the SAS workforce – which currently has 120,000 troops, 67,479 structural– in response to the opening of new health units or devices and other needs that arose.
The second occurred in 2023, and positively affected 5,000 of those 12,000 health workers who were still linked to Andalusian public health in an extraordinary way.
The Ministry has stressed on numerous occasions that the State mobilized 16,000 million euros in 2020 and another 13,000 the following year for those contracts created by the health emergency.
But when we get to 2022, the Covid fund He retired and it became the autonomies that took on this extra hiring, which is still going strong two years later. To maintain all the jobs, the Junta de Andalucía had to specifically face a disbursement of 942 million euros.
The situation, although it is being mitigated again, keeps a few thousand health employees on the tightrope, because if the 2,177 mentioned at the beginning of this information are subtracted from those nearly 7,000 workers in ‘limbo’, there is still a thickness of 4,763.
However, a temporary solution is planned in the short and medium term. That is, on the one hand, 3,175 will work in the SAS between June 1 and September 30 of this year, while the other 1,588 will be required at any time when the system has any need, whether it is the High Frequency Planthe maternity leave or temporary disability or the Summer Planwhich there are just a few days left until it begins.
In that sense, the head of Health in Andalusia, Catalina Garcia, recently announced specific hiring for the summer period, when regular staff vacations are concentrated, an average of 12,000 professionals per month. Specifically, around a thousand temporary workers are expected in June and October, and 10,000 in July, August and September.
Protest climate
Protest last Thursday at the Puerta del Mar Hospital in Cádiz
CSIF Andalusia
The good labor news, which should be made official throughout the week, is received as the Board’s logical reaction to a very uphill context. Without going any further, last Thursday the unions Satse, CSIF, CCOO and UGT —representing 83 percent of the Sectoral Table— they called a series of concentrations in the eight Andalusian provinces, which managed to bring together 2,000 professionals around the hospitals Torrecardenas from Almeria, Gate of the Sea from Cadiz, Queen Sofia From Cordoba, Saint Cecilia from Granada, Juan Ramon Jimenez from Huelva, Jaén Hospital Complex, Malaga Regional and Virgin of Rocío of Sevilla. The most important in Andalusia, in short.
They criticize that from the Ministry there has been “an unprecedented non-compliance” with respect to Primary Care, since “it has not improved at all as a result of the signing of the agreement, quite the opposite. The you wait “They continue to increase uncontrollably and professionals continue to suffer intolerable healthcare pressure.”
Likewise, they point out that “there has been no progress in the new model of Career», with which the unions intended for SAS professionals to be placed on a par with their counterparts from other autonomous communities.
The Ministry committed to all these issues at the beginning of 2023, which allowed the protests that existed at that time to calm down, and which have now returned to the streets.
However, the Board claims to have “more than fulfilled” by allocating at least 25 percent of the budget to Primary Care. By 2024 the amount amounts to 5 billion (36% of Health accounts), which in the words of Minister García “allows us to occupy the top positions in the national ranking.” Likewise, she claims to have undertaken “an in-depth analysis of the average ratios per professional.”
The consolidation of these reinforcement professionals, with whom the workforce is expanded, is certainly a new aid to Primary Care and the Health System. The problem is that the volume of services they must deal with continues to be titanic.