Health takes a step back: it will withdraw incentives from CAPs to reduce sick leave

BarcelonaU-turn by the Health Department. The Ministry will withdraw next week the pilot test that provided for incentives for primary care centers (CAP) that managed to prevent long-term sick leave for mental health and osteomuscular injuries. Two months ago, Health had begun to inform the CAPs that they would receive more budget if they avoided sick leave without diagnosis and delays in the visits needed to assess a person who is on sick leave and, if they have already recovered, to discharge them.

According to El País, faced with the avalanche of criticism from both unions and parliamentary groups, Olga Pané's department has finally decided that indicators on the duration of sick leave will not count towards the allocation of funds to CAPs or for the variable part of doctors' salaries. The commons, in fact, had threatened to condition Salvador Illa's budgets on the withdrawal of this controversial pilot test.

Through the X network, the president of Comuns in Parliament, Jéssica Albiach, has celebrated the Catalan executive's rectification. "Finally, they acknowledge that they were denying reality. Sick leave should only respond to medical criteria," she said.

Until now, the Government had defended the measure because it aimed to "avoid unjustified sick leaves and delays in visits." According to the Generalitat, "many people are on sick leave for months because the tests [to clear them] take too long." Therefore, they pointed out that if the tests are faster, diagnosis and treatment can arrive sooner and the sick leave "lasts as long as it should." It is necessary to avoid "being five months to get a diagnosis, as happens in some cases of non-urgent conditions," they stressed.

The incentives planned, which have now been discarded, however, did not affect the base budget that each center receives for its usual activity. They did, however, condition whether or not an additional fund was perceived.