Storm over closed beds in Costa Blanca hospital

MARINA SALUD rejected claims that it has closed an entire ward at Denia hospital.

Closing 37 beds was nothing more than “a regrouping of beds” according to the company that provides the Marina Alta’s outsourced Social Security health service. Another 21 have been reopened elsewhere, it added.

The regrouping was undertaken with the object of obtaining “maximum efficiency” from resources, Marina Salud maintained.

The Intersindical Salut health professionals’ union contested these claims. Despite giving in to popular protests and restoring night-time emergency services in Pedreguer, Gata de Gorgos, Vergel and Ondara, Marina Salud was once again compromising the area’s health care, claimed a union communiqué.

Longer waiting lists would be an inevitable outcome of the bed closures, Intersindical predicted. 

“Twenty-one rooms have closed on the surgical ward in recent months, creating a wait of more than 70 hours for admission to the ward from the emergency department.  With 16 fewer beds the situation can only get worse.”

Not only patients will be affected, Intersindical warned.  Health professionals on the ward with closed beds would have to modify their duty rosters in order to reconcile their professional and family lives, the communiqué continued.