Patients lying in corridors, patients with serious symptoms treated in a chair, crowded boxes with up to five people, queues of ambulances at the emergency door to drop off or take users, waits of up to eight, ten or more hours to receive care or process an entry into the plant…
That is the quick photo seen in the last few hours, according to health professionals, in hospitals such as the Consorci Sanitari de Terrassa (100 percent public) and other centers - Hospital del Mar, Bellvitge, Moisès Broggi, Taulí... -, also collapsed, those agree. sources, as the admissions and visits of patients due to respiratory infections and viruses such as the flu or covid multiply.
The Department of Health removes a lot of ink from that drawing and ensures that the current reality in hospitals and primary care centers is not as chaotic as some professionals paint it. “There is no collapse,” repeats Francesc Xavier Jiménez, director of the National Emergency Plan of Catalonia (Planuc). “It is true that there is much more activity in the centers and that 45% of all viral infections treated are flu, but the system is prepared to face this situation,” Jiménez reassures.
Statements that are far from the perception of health workers who are at the bottom of the canyon. “What we are experiencing in the last few hours is reminiscent of the first phase of the covid pandemic,” says Xavier Lleonart, emergency doctor at the Terrassa hospital and general secretary of Metges de Catalunya. A health collapse, “which is not very serious because it is widespread and affects other centers,” adds Dr. Lleonart. And what hurts this doctor the most is that “the Catalan health authorities do not assume or admit the problem; This position only shows that the administration has normalized the fact that a patient is lying in a hallway for hours, with his dignity in tatters, or that doctors quit due to stress.
This conflicting perception about the current reality in health centers due to respiratory infections also has its own war of numbers. Health sources reveal to La Vanguardia that in hospitals such as Moisès Broggi (Sant Joan Despí) there have been peaks of “up to 205 patients in the emergency room in a single day.” Some of these patients have waited up to seven days to be admitted to the ward. Jiménez justifies these waits (he does not admit that they are generally so long) with the fact that now 60% of cases that arrive at the emergency room due to respiratory infections are not serious. “So first you have to attend to the priority ones,” he emphasizes.
At the Terrassa hospital, reports the secretary of Metges de Catalunya, “we have had up to 52 patients in the emergency room pending admission, without having a room. Accommodating these patients means occupying two floors of the center.” The saturation here has forced patients to be referred to other health centers.
Francisco Xavier Jiménez, for his part, handles less alarming figures. This senior Health official maintains that the incidence of patients in Catalan hospitals has increased by 10% in the last month due to flu and covid outbreaks. And he adds that in recent days the increase in patients "has oscillated between 2% and 3%." Therefore, Jiménez reiterates that the figures on healthcare during times of respiratory infections “move within the expected range.”
Xavier Lleonart does not share it. “We are saturated because the administration continues not to do its homework. And now, with emergencies and primary schools saturated, we will have to resort to heroic measures again, since there is no longer time to provide the system with more resources or personnel.” Lorena, secretary of Infermeres de Catalunya, shares that thesis. At the Les Corts CAP, where she works, they have treated up to 80 patients in one morning. “That is outrageous, professionals are being asked to make an extra effort that is impossible to achieve,” she criticizes.
Lleonart reveals, on the other hand, that the tension generated among professionals by what he calls “collapse of the system” is already taking its first toll. “We began to hear about many doctors leaving due to stress,” he says. Francesc Xavier Jiménez admits that this staff is missing, but attributes it to casualties due to flu or covid infections in the workplace. Not even here do the opposite poles of the problem coincide. Lorena, from Infermeres de Catalunya, regrets that the last person harmed “by this flagrant lack of foresight” is the patient, “who then pays for it with the health workers, who are the ones in the front row. The sick person's discomfort never reaches the politician directly."
Where everyone does agree is in predicting that the peak of visits and income has not yet arrived. It is estimated that the situation in emergencies and primary care is going to get complicated in the coming days. It is expected that this upward trend will reverse as of January 15 or 20. And there is also coincidence with the fact that vaccination campaigns have failed this fall and winter.
