Spain's Health Ministry to overhaul medical waiting-list registry to curb data manipulation

Spain's Ministry of Health announced it is preparing a Royal Decree to modernise the registration of medical waiting lists across the autonomous communities. The text, overseen by Minister Mónica García, stipulates that patients must be entered onto the list at the time of the doctor's indication, with entries disaggregated by clinical priority and severity. It explicitly forbids any parallel or "B" lists, as well as the practice of excluding patients from counts until they complete certain tests, even if surgery has already been indicated.

The measure also extends to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures and requires that referrals to contracted private centres stay on the list until the service is delivered, even if patients decline private care. The initiative comes a week after it was revealed that the trauma department of Hospital Ramón y Cajal in Madrid altered the priority of 57 patients to fit a 90-day maximum. Additional provisions will publish the number and percentage of patients without assigned appointments for outpatient and diagnostic services, and expand monitoring of surgical interventions from 15 to 20 types.