Torrevieja Hospital Emergency Department on life support

Social network pages are filled with complaints, even from hospital doctors themselves, about the disastrous management at the Torrevieja Hospital, less than 9 months after Ana Barcelo, Minister of Health at the time, removed the old concessionaire, taking it into public control.

Indeed Ernesto Álvarez, an Emergency physician with 25 years of experience, and a doctor at the University Hospital, wrote in a Facebook post that patients die “unhappily” in the corridors of the hospital where he works, and that he is aware of “the pain and suffering ”of the many patients who arrive at the A&E but who nevertheless have to wait for many long hours to be treated.

“Those responsible are the management and directors of the hospital (…) We spend long hours with limited resources, attending to a high volume of patients, many of whom are seriously ill, with some unfortunately dying in the corridors due to the lethargy and mediocrity of the new head of the service ”. He also told of a 56-year-old patient who died after waiting nine hours, “without any investigation or reinforcement of the service.”

According to the Spanish press, Doctors who work in the Emergency Department say that the situation has never been as precarious as it is now, with less than half of the doctors needed per shift -three out of eight- and delays to treatment that exceed 12 hours, and all this even before the additional influx expected during the summer holiday period.

The Facebook post also stated that the hospital has hired a Russian doctor who cannot express herself in Spanish and cannot write up the medical records.

This post went online just a few days after the two new service chiefs took up their posts. But now it has been removed. Social media works like that. The entry has disappeared, almost as if nothing had happened.