The savings plans of the Torrejón hospital are not only reflected in the extracts from which it was requested to reject patients to improve benefits. They are also made explicit in written instructions, the literal or image of which has not been published to protect the sources. One of them is the extract of the email that appears in the image of this news, in which a trusted executive of the CEO of Ribera Salud reprimands employees to follow the instructions given: “As we commented in the meeting, NON-CAPITAL PATIENTS SHOULD NOT BE INCLUDED (sic) in peritoneal dialysis, and apparently this instruction was clear.” By “non-capita” it refers to patients who do not correspond to the health area covered by the hospital and who had to be selected for their profitability.
After two days of silence since this newspaper revealed the orders of the leaders of the Ribera Salud health group, the company that manages the public hospital, the president of the Community of Madrid, this Saturday. He has suggested that the audios are decontextualized: “What I ask is that in honor of the truth everything that has been said in a leaked conversation in a fight between managers be published.”
It coincides with what the CEO of Ribera Salud, Pablo Gallart, has disseminated, a staff he has sent to a group of professionals from the sector, to which this newspaper has had access and which has also emerged this Saturday. In it he assures that the audios are not complete and that they are out of context. Gallart, who asked to be removed from the management of the Torrejón hospital, although he continues to direct the group, has not denied in his statement that he gave the instruction to increase the waiting lists. Additionally, there is evidence of audio guidelines beyond the published recordings, such as this email.
EL PAÍS had access to four audios belonging to a meeting that Gallart had on September 25 with around twenty leaders of the group and the Torrejón University Hospital. Two were published, which were those that had to do with the plans at that center. In them, he said what numerous media outlets have already replicated: that it was necessary to “retrace the path” of the reduction of waiting lists that the hospital made in 2022 and 2023 to seek an EBITDA (Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of “four or five million.” Also, it was necessary to look for which processes are contributory to this EBITDA.
Before its publication, EL PAÍS took three precautions to ensure that it was not manipulation or statements taken out of context. First, he verified what was said at that meeting with other sources. Next, this newspaper had access to an extension of more than 20 minutes with all of Gallart’s initial intervention. He checked the context and that it did not detract from the veracity of the plans that are evident in the fragments. Finally, he collected written documentation that reinforced the veracity of these plans.
In the statement that Gallart sent this Saturday, he sends another audio of that meeting to contextualize it: “We are willing to stay in the project, even if the profitability that we are going to have from now on in the future is zero. Okay? Always, of course, we will have to have a much smaller waiting list than the public one. What we are talking about here is how we can make Torrejón survive,” according to Europa Press.
This is not contradictory to anything published so far by this newspaper. Furthermore, EL PAÍS that Gallart exposed the poor financial situation of the hospital to make the cuts and increase the waiting lists: “The CEO justifies this before his audience, alleging that the Torrejón hospital is in deficit, that it will never make a profit until the end of the concession, since each year they lose nine million euros in amortizations and financial expenses. He assures that what the administration contributes is not enough to cover the expenses that the hospital has.”
But what further reinforces that Gallart’s intentions are not decontextualized are the written orders to which EL PAÍS has had access, in which a manager reminds employees of the instructions given previously. As the businessman suggests in the audios, they are indications to select “non-capita” processes based on their profitability. For the first time, a fragment of one of these instructions written two weeks after the September 25 meeting, in the newspaper’s possession, is published here:
“On this topic, I have already been given the patients we have in peritoneal, and according to the last list (September) I believe that we do have non-capita patients in this modality, when as we commented in the meeting NON-CAPITA PATIENTS SHOULD NOT BE INCLUDED in peritoneal dialysis, and apparently this instruction was clear. I am passing on the two patients so that you can confirm that there are indeed 2 non-capita patients in peritoneal.”
No more documentation is published than what this media has had access to so as not to compromise the sources. But there are others in which the order is given to reuse single-use sanitary products up to 10 times.
In his appearance on Saturday, Ayuso said: “There have been two complaints here, the first, that the waiting lists were forced to increase due to political interest. And another, that medical material has been reused or even that human remains have been found in the hospital beds, which is very serious.”
EL PAÍS has only published instructions, at no time has it said that these guidelines were being executed, because it has no evidence of this. It has not published that “medical material has been reused”, nor the allusion to human remains, but rather that orders were given to do so, which are documented in writing. And much less has this media stated anything that is related to human remains in hospital beds.
