Government to set up committee to reform Catalan healthcare system

The government has approved the creation of a committee that will advise and coordinate actions to reform the Catalan healthcare system.

It will be attached to the Department of Health and chaired by the managing director of the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital in Barcelona, ​​Manel del Castillo.

The committee will evaluate proposals that have been worked on in recent years, and will not prepare new documents but will study ideas that have already been put forward.

Among the priorities are the adequacy of health financing and spending, improving accessibility and waiting list times for people, deploying integrated social and health care, and the Public Health Agency.

In last week's appearance in parliament to explain the challenges of her department in the new legislature, the Minister of Health, Olga Pané, made it clear that it is necessary to "launch reforms" to guarantee the economic sustainability of the healthcare system in the coming years.

Pané asked opposition politicians to come together towards this goal and warned that she did not want "more documents" to reform the system, because several had already been approved in the last years of the different national health pacts.

The head of the committee, del Castillo, pointed out that the current system was created 40 years ago, and in those four decades, patients, professionals, healthcare facilities and administrations have changed significantly.

"The system is not giving the agile and accessible response that we would like," he explained. "It is necessary to incorporate reforms, such as less bureaucratic organizational systems. We have to update it," he said.