Fifteen years later, the Manises hospital, in Valencia, will cease to be a privately managed public hospital center. The hospital promoted by former president Eduardo Zaplana at the end of the 90s, completes the public reversion process this Tuesday and will become a center of the health network managed, now, by the Ministry of Health. This puts an end to another health center under the “Alzira model”, in reference to the fact that it was in this town where the model of public centers managed by private companies was inaugurated.
A countdown that began on May 4, 2023, when the Generalitat Valenciana, then in the hands of the Botànic, informed Sanitas, the company that managed the Manises health department, that it would not extend the management contract, which ended on the 7th. May 2024 and sent him a schedule for the delivery of the necessary documentation.
With the change of government, the process was left in the hands of the Popular Party, which studied this transformation and announced last October that the process would continue, both in Manises and in Dénia. A process that the minister of the sector, Mariano Gómez, proposed to carry out in an “orderly, calm and without incident” manner and that in the center of Manises affects nearly 300,000 citizens from 14 municipalities. Regarding the transfer, the councilor will report this Tuesday, as he visits the hospital and will meet with heads of service as well as with representatives of the Works Council of the health department.
In the process, however, there are some 'buts'. One is the one put forward by the workers in their laboratories, who did not know until the last minute yesterday if, with the change, they also become labor personnel to be extinguished. “We hope there is not a partial reversal as happened in Dénia,” explains Carmen Martínez, representative of CCOO-PV of the 35 workers who are part of the Laboratory Service.
It is one of the drawbacks that this union puts on this reversal process, which hopes that "the same thing as in Torrevieja and Dénia does not happen, where the Ministry of Health, to avoid the subrogation of personnel, has extended the outsourcing of the laboratories through emergency contracts.” Martínez explains that yesterday, Monday, they received a message informing them of his registration at Synlab and his registration at Sanitas. He remained to know if today there will also be a message to inform them that they are now staff of the public Health Department.
The others are provided by the opposition, for whom the new public management must guarantee the quality of the service. This was stated by Compromís, who yesterday gathered at the doors of the hospital to denounce "the degradation and deterioration of care in recent months", a period that they explained has been "especially serious."
The deputy of Compromís in the Corts and spokesperson for Health, Carles Esteve, assured that the hospital had agendas closed six months in advance, waits of more than three weeks to visit the family doctor or appointments nine months away for diagnostic tests, " "They have been the norm," he denounced yesterday.
Esteve also denounced that thanks to the privatization policy of the PP in previous legislatures, Sanitas “has done business at the expense of the health of many people. In this department alone, since 2009, more than 2 billion euros of public health have ended up in private hands,” said the deputy.
With the step taken in Manises, only the Vinalopó hospital will remain as an example of a directly managed public center, whose reversion the PSPV demanded yesterday. The Ombudsman of the PSPV in Les Corts, José Muñoz, demanded that the management of that hospital return to “public” within a model that in the last eight years has become practically public and that has proven to be “inefficient” because it worked for companies, but “harmed” society.
The Platform for the Reversion of the Vinalopó Hospital has called on the citizens of Elx Crevillent, Aspe, Hondón de las Nieves and Hondón de los Frailes to demonstrate on May 18 to demand this change in an action that will consist of surrounding the hospital center with a human chain.
