The 17 scientific societies that make up the semFYC federation, and on behalf of its 22,000 members (the largest Medical Scientific Society in the National Health System), jointly sign the following manifesto in relation to the situation that has been experienced in recent weeks in Primary Care of the Community of Madrid, aggravated in recent days with the treatment given to the negotiation committee that has staged a union lockdown at the Ministry’s headquarters to demand more negotiation.
The federation of the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine, semFYC, wishes to raise its voice together to support the group of specialists in Family and Community Medicine, and the rest of the Primary Care professionals of the Community of Madrid. The semFYC wishes to highlight that the group of people who make up Primary Care in this community have expressed themselves peacefully and in an organized manner in recent weeks in an admirable way.
In the same way that the Madrid Society of Family and Community Medicine already did, now it is the 17 societies that make up the semFYC who want to point out that:
- The set of claims that have been made these days are more than legitimate: Requesting measures to remedy the job insecurity of the collective is only the tip of the iceberg of the profound reform that the management model requires.
- In this sense, the semFYC wants to position itself in favor of a transformation of the Primary Care model, guiding it towards ensuring longitudinality both in care and with the population served, by family doctors. As we have pointed out on numerous occasions, there is evidence that the longitudinal care model provided by Primary Care increases life expectancy and reduces hospital admissions.
- After analyzing the existing evidence, the measures that have been proposed to be implemented by the Ministry of Health and the highest levels of the Community of Madrid go in the opposite direction of maintaining longitudinality, for which reason they imply an affectation in the health and care quality that the citizens of this community would perceive.
- Although this set of companies take a position on socio-labour issues always from the point of view of the scientific evidence of health management models, in this case we cannot ignore the indignation caused by the treatment provided by the Ministry of Health of the Comunidad de Madrid —preventing the passage of food and medicine to peaceful protesters— to the group of doctors who led a 36-hour confinement as a measure to demand an intensive negotiation path.
For all these reasons, the entire semFYC federation wishes to express its most sincere support and gratitude to the White Tide call that is held in Madrid under the slogan ‘Without Public Health, there is no right to Health’ and invites all its members and partners and all people to defend the National Health System and Primary Care as indisputable hallmarks of our country’s identity.
Both semFYC and the group of 17 societies that are grouped in this federation consider that an evolution of the Primary Care model is not only necessary in the Community of Madrid, but also throughout the territory. For this, it will be necessary to always reach a negotiated and consensual solution with truthful proposals aimed at the quality of care and with guarantees of compliance.