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Spain receives the worst European rating in the management by the Government of the collaboration of private healthcare in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic , according to the analysis that a group of experts convened by the Coordinates Institute of Governance and Applied Economics has carried out on how the contribution and contribution of private healthcare in the current pandemic has been managed in Spain.

According to these experts, the Government's decision to place all private clinics under the sole health command "regardless of the incidence of coronavirus in each area and the delegation of agreements between the Administration and private companies to each of the 17 communities autonomous, without guidelines and without a clear and homogeneous model that allows the collection of the expenses incurred during the health crisis, have generated an unacceptable damage for the clinics ".

"The single command caused many private centers to have to reject their regular and associated patients to accommodate coronavirus patients who finally never arrived because they were in areas of low incidence of the pandemic . In this way, the path to income from these companies, their resources were not used, nor were they allowed to benefit from ERTE because it is an essential sector, "they highlight.

"The failure of the Spanish model has caused that right now the survival of more than 2,400 medical centers and the employment of about 60,000 health professionals, as direct employment, and twice as many indirectly affected are at serious risk ," they warn.

"There is no clear model"

After the fall of the sole command and the end of the State of alarm, indicates the analysis of the Institute, the Government has delegated in each of the 17 autonomous communities the regulation of collaboration with private health. The private health centers "have assumed a cost for the coverage of the pandemic and there is no clear model that allows the collection of the expenses incurred", they point out.

The impact on the evaluation of the cost and its repercussion on the income of private centers varies according to each autonomous community. Thus, Murcia, La Rioja, Cantabria and Asturias are those that have suffered the greatest decline. On the contrary, Madrid, Castilla y León and Catalonia have been the areas that have been least affected. Centers without internment have decreased their billing by more than 85% on average and hospital centers by more than 60% compared to the period before the pandemic, according to this analysis.

"This lack of homogeneity makes planning and optimization practically impossible for large resource organizations to fight the pandemic and to guarantee the profitability of a sector that accounts for 3.4% of the national GDP and employs 266,000 high-value professionals" , lament the analysts of the Coordinates Institute.

Private healthcare in danger

The analysis also studies how this collaboration has been in the main European countries and reflects the "disastrous model" implemented in Spain that "is going to endanger an important part of the private health sector . " Thus, they argue that, while in Spain each community "does what it considers to be without the Government establishing reasonable and homogeneous rates", in France, Germany and the United Kingdom a collaboration formula has been imposed in which the health of the population prevails and compensation to companies to "guarantee an adequate service and the maintenance of a strategic sector with high added value".

The report highlights that two legislative packages have been approved in Germany. On the one hand, the Covid-19 Hospital Aid Law to compensate for the economic consequences in hospitals and contracted doctors . On the other hand, the Law for the protection of the population in an epidemic situation of national importance to improve the capacity to respond to epidemics. Both initiatives have been coordinated by the Federal Government.

The Hospital Aid Law has two aspects: first, the health of German citizens by making the entire network of medical centers , both public and private, available to them without having to think about the cost of treatment.

On the other hand, and among many other aids, hospitals will receive financial compensation for operations and reprogrammed treatments to free up capacity to treat patients with coronavirus infection; a bonus of 50,000 euros for each intensive care bed they create; For personal protective equipment, hospitals will receive a supplement of 50 euros per patient and a long list of financial aid and simplification of procedures to put the end of the pandemic as the main focus of action for the entire Germanic health field.

In the UK, the Government enacted an emergency act to achieve broad staffing and regulatory flexibility in the health and social care sector . Thanks to this legislation, additional funding has been granted to private healthcare to cover the additional costs caused by the response to the coronavirus.

Therefore, they point out, "it guaranteed for the entire country that financial restrictions would not hinder the adoption of urgent and necessary measures" , whether in terms of personnel, adaptation of facilities, equipment, patient discharge packages, staff training, elective care or any other relevant category. To achieve this, the United Kingdom has approved a list of services and their rates and has advanced a payment on account to all its providers to guarantee the health of its citizens and maintain the stability, sustainability and future of its public and private health sector.

France has financially supported all public and private sector health establishments. On the 10th of each month, social security entered private health companies a percentage of what was billed in the same period of the previous year. In addition, France pays an additional fee for each hospitalized patient with Covid-19. This system of payments on the earnings of the previous year also applies to the salaries of private doctors . Thus, in the face of a possible second wave of the pandemic, the objective is to have the entire workforce of the Health sector.

"While in Spain the legislation varies from community to community and there is no unanimity when it comes to setting either health or economic criteria to use the full potential of the private sector in the fight against the pandemic and guarantee the health of citizens, the population calls for greater public-private cooperation. Nearly 60,000 professionals and some 2,400 private health centers are dying among 17 different bureaucracies just when the country most needs affordable and quality health care, "the report highlights.

"The ideological blindness with which the Central Administration has approached collaboration with private health centers to fight the pandemic has been truly reckless. Above the fight against the disease and care for those affected, there have been ideological prejudices that They have prevented the optimization of resources . This blindness now blocks the implementation of the necessary system of economic compensation for the expenses assumed by private healthcare and can cause a notable economic catastrophe. And what is worse: a decapitalization of professionals and organizations that takes decades to form " , concludes the executive vice president of the Coordinates Institute, Jesús Sánchez Lambás.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Spain
  • UK
  • France
  • Germany
  • GDP
  • Murcia
  • Madrid
  • Castile and Leon
  • The Rioja
  • Asturias
  • Cantabria
  • Catalonia

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