Lawsuit against hospital company

Legal action against Marina Salud over missing GP clinics

CAMPAIGNERS for de-privatised public healthcare plan to take legal action against Dénia hospital's management company for failing to build a new GP surgery in the town and to extend the one in Calpe.

Marina Salud – a joint-venture company made up of German health insurers DKV and the former owners of Alzira hospital, Ribera Salud – is contractually bound to do both.

The Calpe centre was to be turned into a specialist centre covering various areas of medicine, and Dénia should have had a second clinic. According to the franchise terms, these works were supposed to have been finished by 2010, a year after the Marina Alta health department was privatised.

The Plataforma en Defensa de la Sanidad Pública ('Public Healthcare Protection Association') considers Marina Salud and the regional health authority to be guilty of perverting the course of justice – not just breach of contract.

As a result of the firm's failure to build the new practices, patients are often unable to get an appointment for at least two weeks, says the Plataforma.

It has written to the Marina Alta district capital's town council reminding it of the so-called 'Dénia Declaration', signed on October 26, which pledged to create the necessary facilities to guarantee efficient health services.

Also, the association has written to Spain's president Pedro Sánchez calling for him to abolish a law created by the right-wing PP regional government in 1997 allowing hospitals and area health departments to be privatised, and has arranged a meeting with Valencian health minister Rubén Martínez Dalmau.

As reported last week in CBNews, regional president Ximo Puig has announced the de-privatisation of Dénia health department is now 'in its final stage' and will take place before the franchise expires at the end of 2022.