Tomás Merina (Córdoba, 69 years old) savors the honeys of success this Wednesday morning. A little over twelve hours ago he won the elections to preside over the Madrid College of Physicians and he sits down to talk to this newspaper at the same table where he followed the results the night before with his campaign team. He has several plates in front of him with Werther’s candies and Kit Kat chocolates that he does not touch during an hour of conversation, perhaps because he already has enough sweets with his victory: “For me this is a chocolate that offers me life at the end of my career professional”.
Merina won with 47% of the votes against the current president, the cardiologist Manuel Martínez-Sellés, and the nephrologist Esther Rubio. The previous president was seen among doctors as the supposed favorite of the Executive of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, because during the long strike of almost five months in primary care, between 2022 and 2023, he released a statement in which he asked for the call to be called off. In addition, he was controversial for his positions against abortion and euthanasia, and several members of his management team had left the board amid accusations of financial mismanagement and secrecy. His replacement assures that he is a [candidato] independent backed by a diverse platform. Among those supports is the majority medical union, Amyts, which promoted that strike.
The new president is a medical businessman who has managed the Fuensanta clinic for three decades, in Ciudad Lineal, in the east of the capital, the family business that he inherited from his father. That task, which he abandoned in 2021 when he sold the company to the Viamed group, has been combined with his other passion: studying careers. He has five degrees, from different areas of knowledge: he has a degree in Medicine, Sociology, Political Science and Administration Sciences, a degree in Art History, a diploma in Health from the National School of Health and an MBA from IESE. “I have been happy studying,” he says, “being given some notes and the date of an exam.”
Now he has a tough test: managing the largest medical association in Spain, an institution with 51,866 members. You will have to measure how much you are involved in the turbulent field of politics to defend the interests of doctors. He assures that school is not a space for political confrontation, but he will have to tread very carefully because healthcare in Madrid is usually an explosive issue.
Ask. Would you stand up to Ayuso if you consider it necessary to defend the doctors?
Answer. I am going to defend the professionals and I am going to defend good practice, regardless of which party is in the Government of the Community. I am neither old enough nor old enough to have mortgages with anyone.
P. Was the previous president autonomous from the Ministry of Health?
R. Ask him, by his actions you will know him.
P. In particular, the stance he took during the primary strike was criticized.
R. The profession of medicine is the one most dedicated to the service of others. Coming to a strike is an extreme situation and I believe that the School Board did not rise to the occasion during the primary conflict two years ago.
P. Has the Madrid Government fulfilled its commitments to the doctors who went on strike?
R. Well, there is a monitoring committee and I don’t know the precise terms of the agreement to end the strike. What I think needs to be done is a deep analysis of why doctors are going on strike.
P. According to Ayuso, they were politically motivated.
R. I do not believe that 5,000 doctors in Madrid will go on strike for political motivation. I think whoever says that is wrong.
P. What do you think of Madrid repeating in 2025 for another year as the community with the lowest budget per capita allocated to public health?
R. Madrid has to stop considering excellent medicine as an expense and has to start considering it an investment. Because the fact that Madrid has this medicine of excellence means value for economic activity. It is said that when Formula 1 comes it will leave 400 million euros in Madrid and I wonder how much money the thousands of sick people who come from other provinces leave in the Community, or the thousands of doctors who come to take recycling courses, or the hundreds of residents who come to train.
P. Why are doctors’ salaries in Madrid insufficient?
R. We have to stop the snowball that can mean that doctors after training do not find recognition for their work and leave the country due to precariousness issues, due to salary issues. That is a national problem, it is not a Madrid problem.
P. Would it be a failure of the Sánchez Government if there is no agreement for Muface?
R. I believe that when two do not agree to sign something, they both fail. And if there is no Muface agreement, what we will ask for will be a contingency plan to cover the economic disaster that may occur to the professionals who are currently working for the insurance companies serving the civil servants. Because in the end the one who provides the service is the doctor, and no one remembers the doctor in this whole negotiation issue.
P. Are they going to suffer a big disaster?
R. If the insured disappear there will be professionals who will need a contingency plan that takes into account that there may be professionals who have made investments in technology to care for patients based on historical data and that if now with a short notice you are left without activity, well They are the last bead of the Rosary. Then they will need a contingency plan from the insurance companies or from the State, because they cannot be left abandoned.
P. The previous president sought other sources of financing through a controversial rental to a pro-life foundation at a cost considered too low and after carrying out expensive renovation work. Will you keep that contract?
R. I don’t know the school’s accounts because during the three-way debate we had on December 9, I asked for an advance and he didn’t want to provide it. The first thing we have to know is to see what the result is for the year 2024.
In my opinion, the school should be supported fundamentally by the membership fees. The problem for the member is not paying 80 euros per quarter or 60 euros per quarter, the problem is providing service from the school. What the referee wants is to receive service. It is not a problem of lowering or raising the fee by 20 euros per quarter, that cannot be the doctor’s problem, the doctor’s problem is in receiving services, in receiving support, in receiving support from the College of Physicians.
P. Will he maintain the 25% reduction in the membership fee that his predecessor made?
R. We will have to see the results of the year 2024 that we still do not know.
P. Have politicians congratulated you? Ayuso? The Ministry of Health?
R. I have many congratulations from the professional world, but from the political sphere I am not aware. But I can’t guarantee that they are not on the phone. Yesterday when I went to bed I had 800 messages and even though I read them vertically, I didn’t get them. I have become a fashionable footballer.
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