The Comunidad de Madrid has approved payments worth more than 7,000 million euros to the Quirónsalud group since the arrival of Isabel Díaz Ayuso to the regional presidency, according to information published by 'Cadena SER'. These amounts correspond to the management of several public hospitals under a concession regime or singular agreement.
The center that concentrates the majority of the spending is the Fundación Jiménez Díaz, which has received close to 4,400 million euros, more than 60% of the total. It is followed by the hospital of Valdemoro, with more than 1,000 million, the hospital of Móstoles with more than 850 million and that of Villalba, which approaches 400 million in the same period.
Added to these figures are more than 400 million euros additional in the form of credits also destined for these centers and to the hospital of Torrejón, managed by the group Ribera Salud. The payments respond to different concepts, from ordinary healthcare up to the dispensing of medicines, compensations for the COVID-19 pandemic or services such as the voluntary interruption of pregnancy.
According to 'Cadena SER', payments also appear under concepts such as “economic rebalancing” or upward revisions of tariffs, items that the opposition in the Asamblea de Madrid describes as “opaque”. These criticisms focus on the lack of transparency and on the growing volume of public resources allocated to private management.
The payment of some amounts has been marked by judicial conflicts. During the period of José Luis González Armengol in the vice-counselorship of Health, certain invoices were rejected that were subsequently appealed by Quirón. However, with the arrival of Antonio Zapatero in 2021, the autonomous Executive changed its criterion and began to yield in the courts before the group's claims.
In fact, more than 150 million euros of the approximately 160 million paid by court order would have been paid without a substantive review by the judges, due to that “partial implicit acquiescence”. The last cited case occurred on February 25, with a payment exceeding ten million to the Fundación Jiménez Díaz, while the regional Government defends that all amounts correspond to healthcare services effectively rendered.
