Tomás Merina wins the elections for the Madrid College of Physicians: the doctor of change supported by Amyts | Madrid News

The Madrid College of Physicians (Icomem) has a new president. Doctor in General Medicine Tomás Merina was elected with 47% of the votes registered in the 39 polling stations located in different parts of the Community, beating Dr. Esther Rubio, who accounted for 27% of the vote, and the current president, the Dr. Manuel Martínez-Sellés, who was relegated to last place with 25%. Merina’s election is crucial for Madrid doctors, many of whom have distanced themselves from the highest institution that represents them due to Martínez-Sellés’ management. Icome for everyonethe name given to the candidacy of the now president, pointed out during his campaign the waste of school funds in the various reforms undertaken by the previous board of directors, the lack of support for professionals – including the snub to primary school doctors and pediatricians during the 2022 strike― and the closeness that the school maintained with the policies of the Ministry of Health of the Community of Madrid, during the direction of the previous counselor Alberto Ruiz Escudero and of the current one, Fátima Matute.

“We have to recover the institutional capacity of the College of Physicians, its power of influence has to be greater in society,” Merina said in a statement after her victory. The new president seeks to lead a college that represents all doctors from their training period to retirement. “The College of Physicians will be open to all colleagues,” he assured.

Participation in these Icomem elections has exceeded the figure recorded in 2020, although modestly: 18.4% of the members voted (51,866 in the Community of Madrid), compared to 13% in the last elections. These elections had twice as many voting centers as those in 2020, as announced by Martínez-Sellés. The 36 tables were divided into 22 public hospitals and 14 private hospitals, in addition to three at the Icomem headquarters, open from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Martínez-Sellés assured that one of his “obsessions” was for more doctors to participate in these elections, so one of the novelties this year was the implementation of telematic voting. To access this option, applicants had to register in person at the school headquarters between November 29 and December 10, but only 44 of the voters used this route. The third option was voting by mail, which also required prior registration, which provided only one valid vote.

Merina has assured that tables were also requested in primary care centers, a sector that has more than 5,000 doctors, but they were not listened to. According to candidate Esther Rubio, this especially affected workers in the most remote health centers, but also those who had longer days.

José Antonio Ferruz, a family doctor, stressed this idea during the vote, in which primary doctors asked for polling stations in health centers, but were not attended to: “It seems that we are second-class doctors.” He acknowledged that in the last legislature he did not feel represented or “supported,” that is why he went to the Gregorio Marañón Hospital, one of the hospitals with the highest number of voters, to exercise his right. Ferruz stressed: “I would like it to be a school open to all the demands of all medical professional groups, that they would listen to us and defend us.”

Marisa Rodríguez, a nephrologist at Gregorio Marañón, explained that she liked the school “as it is,” although she was confident that it could improve, which is why she had voted for Esther Rubio: “I would like it to be closer to day-to-day problems.” , like salaries. “We cannot sustain healthcare by paying doctors little.”

The new president faces a mandate full of challenges. Madrid doctors are in the middle of a health crisis, with demands of all kinds, such as improving their working conditions that have been neglected for years, according to what they themselves claimed. They also face problems such as the fact that Madrid is still one of the few Communities that has not returned to the 35-hour work day, while maintaining the 37.5 hours established more than a decade ago due to the crisis, that its health professionals are of the lowest paid in the entire country, patient agendas are overflowing and, therefore, it is impossible for professionals to dedicate the necessary time to each one. All that, they say, is just the tip of the iceberg. Behind it there is a cluster of situations, such as the lack of an occupational risk plan in primary care or the flight of professionals to other communities with better conditions, in which the president is expected to intercede.

Milagros Sánchez, a specialist in the digestive system, and her husband José Luis Liaño, a surgeon, both retired, also went together to the Gregorio Marañón polling station to vote for a “progressive candidate, with young people and without political affiliations,” she said. she. They consider that the last legislature did pay attention to retirees, “because they wanted to get their votes,” but they recognize that the problems of practicing doctors have not been addressed. They have a daughter who is a doctor and, thinking about her, they have decided to make the change. “We want a school that, if it has to go out into the street, goes out,” says Sánchez.

Then there are the problems directly related to the management of the school. The previous vice president of Icomem, Luisa González Pérez, resigned at the beginning of December due to the lack of transparency of the board led by Martínez-Sellés regarding the management of accounts. According to Amyts, López requested reports on the school’s finances, such as the 2023 financial report, which has never been published, or the monograph on renovation expenses, but did not receive any response. The Icomem then issued a statement in which it assured that the former vice president had access to all the documentation and accounts, most of which had been approved by López during the mandate.

Another repeated complaint has been the difficulty that members have in obtaining benefits from the institution for which they pay a quarterly fee, as is the case with training courses. A doctor at the La Paz Hospital who preferred not to identify himself assures that the fee they pay to the school is “quite high” so that they do not have access to training. “We have very valuable facilities in the center of Madrid where courses could be organized,” he highlights. Merina assured during the electoral debate on December 9 that training would be one of the priorities of her presidency.

“We didn’t vote last time and we regret not having done so,” says Amparo Valle, a pediatrician at the Fuencarral health center, who arrived this Tuesday to vote at the La Paz Hospital near the closing of the polling station. And he predicted: “I think that in the next four years there may be a change.”