The councilman of Together, Dr. José Miguel Ferro, launched strong criticism against the Municipal Hospital, denouncing deficiencies in the benefits of guards, pointing out that, at times, this does not occur. Likewise, he spoke of the difficult situation of private health institutions that generate an oversaturation in the public hospital.
This was expressed in an interview for Radio Chivilcoy, within the framework of a project that he presented to the Deliberative Council to declare a health emergency in the main health center of the city and the formation of a table that works in the population health.
“Chivilcoyans and many professionals linked to health are aware of the serious situation of health care in our city, something that they had never experienced before. Health is one, beyond that it may be divided into public and private, and we have to find the mechanisms to provide the best care to our population”.
“As members of the PRO we put this problem on the agenda, which one sees as a health professional. In October or November we had already presented a project for the formation of a table, in the same vein, not to weigh economic resources from the public to the private, but to listen to the problems that the private sector has”.
He stated that, at present, “the private ones know that, for a long time, they cannot comply all the time with the medical guards, on weekends they do not have it.”
– Why does this happen if historically there always was?
There is not just one cause and we cannot keep hiding it under the table. Chivilcoy Between the two private institutions, they provide 80 beds and they will be lost. Where we have the closure of private institutions and it is a minimum of cold, where are you going to intern the demand? And there are days that the Municipal Hospital guards are not even covered, but the emergency intensive care is. A patient of mine was told to leave a phone number so that when a doctor is on call, they will call you for a check-up.
This has worsened, which means that, at times, Chivilcoyans do not have an emergency health system that can solve the pathology that is presented. We do not blame anyone, but we cannot not form a table that includes the Hospital, the private ones, the social works, the prepaid ones, the representatives of the health workers, Sanitary Zone X, PAMI, IOMA… Everyone has to be there to see if there is an idea that can modify this very serious situation.
In Chivilcoy, faced with a sudden health problem, we are not having the medical capacity to attend to it properly. There is a great lack of logistics and methodology because the Hospital is oversubscribed due to the absence of the private ones. There was no training, search for human resources, emergency protocols.
There are things that are resolved in the office and at home and other things that need a finer evaluation through a laboratory or complementary method, which is given by the guards. You send the patient with a note and they are not attended to, they stay for five or six hours and then they leave.
– Before the private ones were fine because they attended PAMI but now the social work attends in the Hospital. Why is the PAMI taken out of the private sector?
Before I became regional director, PAMI had the Clínica del Carmen, until it closed, so all those people ended up at the Hospital. Now there are two private institutions in Chivilcoy, the Sanatorium and the IMO. The Sanatorium has a criminal issue with PAMI for an old issue, so it cannot agree. As for the IMO, they were never willing to accept the PAMI capita and we offered it to them more than once.
The health of Chivilcoy is not only the Municipal Hospital, it is the integral health of the Chivilcoyans. There is a lack of management and protocol, of commitment within the Hospital. There is reluctance for working conditions, labor treatment. It is not only an economic question, it is a question of form. That it is not a problem to do a urine test, for example. And those who make an effort, you have to recognize them, take care of them, because they get tired.
– If we have a harsh winter, we could be facing an even greater complexity…
I try to be very cautious in this, because we do not want to generate paranoia in society, but the winter months are the ones with the highest number of hospitalizations, because seasonal illnesses appear mainly in older people. That is why we have to dialogue so that the private ones can keep their doors open without this meaning that the economic resources of the state go to the private ones. You have to keep the doors open with a reasonable medical quality.
– The health march made visible the situation of what health workers earn, which is not adequate…
The salaries are not attractive for those who found a career development outside of emergency medicine. Politics has a serious error, which is to consider that high salaries can only be received by political officials. It can also be charged by a doctor who puts on a face 24 hours attending emergencies. A well-trained professional will end up making management cheaper, because it will solve better using resources, people will be more satisfied and the health of the population will be much better.
– From 1 to 10, how are we in health in Chivilcoy?
Appalling. How long are we going to continue without dealing with this problem of such seriousness that affects the people of Chivilcoy? The Hospital would benefit from a phenomenon that private health works so that it is not over-demanded and over-saturated.