The Ministry of Health has announced the investment of 15,500,000 euros in a new building next to the Doctor José Molina Orosa Hospital, which will have an approximate number of 100 beds in an area of 5,100 square meters. They have also announced new buildings next to the Juan Carlos I Hospital in Gran Canaria for 14,500,000 euros, in the Nuestra Señora de Candelaria University Hospital Complex in Tenerife for 12,760,000 euros and, finally, the rehabilitation of floors in the University Hospital Complex of the Canary Islands for 3,110,000 euros.
In total, the Ministry reports that “342 hospital beds are added in the same year, which represents the largest increase in public beds in the last decade”. These infrastructures, they say, "will serve to strengthen hospital care, which will contribute to the recovery of healthcare activity that has been lost during the pandemic." This allocation is intended to "increase the resilience of the public health system against possible outbreaks of Covid-19 or other emerging diseases, preventing them from affecting care for other pathologies."
The four projects executed by the SCS will mean, as a whole, "the creation of 15,800 new square meters of healthcare surface area, which will be equipped with the equipment and technical means necessary to become operational at the end of the works, which will require a public investment of 47,3000,200 euros.”
The declaration of emergency of these actions, says the Ministry, "responds to the urgent need to expand the physical and technical capacity of the hospitals that have supported greater healthcare pressure since the pandemic began due to Covid-19, in particular those of the Health Areas of Gran Canaria, Tenerife and Lanzarote, in which there has been an over-occupation of beds by patients with coronavirus during successive epidemiological waves and in which alternative spaces have been enabled, sometimes in structures that are not strictly healthcare-related."
The projects in execution will allow, in a short period of time, to have stable, adequate and multipurpose infrastructures to respond to exceptional situations, such as the current pandemic by SARS-CoV-2, and that hospitals return to allocate their facilities, human resources and technical means to ordinary healthcare activity, which has suffered the effects of care for COVID-19 pathology.
This recovery, according to the Ministry, of ordinary healthcare activity is directly related to the objectives of the Aborda Plan, which seeks to reduce waiting lists by 30% and place delays below 90 days. The plan, "which has a financial allocation of 200 million euros and a duration of two years", needs the SCS to concentrate healthcare resources in attending to non-COVID pathology from now on.
Healthcare purposes
For the execution of these infrastructures, industrialized materials and construction methods will be used that allow obtaining quality solutions in times much shorter than conventional ones, in addition to flexibility to carry out future expansions or subsequent dismantling, in case it is not necessary to have these facilities once the current situation has been overcome.
The 3 building structures of the Health Areas of Gran Canaria, Tenerife and Lanzarote, as well as floors 3, 4 and 5 of building “D” of the HUC "will be used for the admission of acute and sub-acute patients, derived from the hospitals to which they are attached, whose beds could be used for critical patients if necessary."
These buildings will also allow to alleviate the healthcare pressure of the emergency services due to patients with COVID-19 pathology pending admission, in addition to concentrating activities such as screening or isolation of patients, support for techniques and procedures of central laboratories with portable methods or location of public health units, such as logistics centers for control and tracking.