Social Rights gives itself another year to save thousands of nursing home places
The centers have more time to demonstrate that they meet the new criteria, which require larger rooms with fewer people.
BarcelonaThe modernization of nursing homes, homes for people with disabilities, and mental health centers will have to wait. The Generalitat (Catalan government) is giving centers another year to demonstrate that their facilities and services meet the necessary standards to be able to offer places to beneficiaries of the dependency law. This accreditation process was originally scheduled to end next month, but the Department of Social Rights and Inclusion has postponed the deadline until October 2026 to facilitate the correction of the deficiencies that currently prevent them from obtaining approval and prevent their closure.
How many places will be affected? The department headed by Mònica Martínez-Bravo assures that the impact will be minimal and, therefore, affirms that the waiting list, which is around 18,000 people and an average of three years for a nursing home, will not worsen either. The department insists that there will be a "transformation process," as any loss of places will be offset by the promised 6,000 new places. However, there is no guarantee that the place will be in the same neighborhood or city where the service beneficiary lives. There is a wide range within the sector: between 3,000 and 12,000 places Social Rights trusts that this one-year extension—which the governing council approves this Tuesday in its first meeting after the summer—will allow centers that want to continue in the public system to complete the process. So far, the department has received 1,250 accreditation requests and 500 have been resolved, both positively and negatively. However, as this is an open process, the center's owners can correct the deficiencies and request approval again. Only 61 cases have been deemed non-accreditable, and the number of places that have been suspended has not been specified, but the department insists that none of the families who currently benefit from them should suffer. The place will continue in the public system until the death of the user, and from then on, the department will stop paying for it.
Triple rooms
The vast majority of refusals to approve accreditation are due to the structure of the building or dwelling where the residences are located due to the impossibility of carrying out works to adapt the spaces to the established criteria. In this section, the centers must offer rooms larger than 8 square meters, eliminate those with more than two beds (around 1,600 places are in triple rooms), and have the capacity to widen corridors or add common spaces, as well as have adapted access.
Densely populated neighborhoods or those with older housing are those where the residences that will have the most difficulty complying with the regulations are concentrated. For example,Barcelona's Eixample, which is also suffering from pressure from tourist apartments, and other cities with an aging housing stock.
But for now, according to the regional ministry, it is expected that there will be no major loss of places, thanks in part to the €50 million subsidized credit line that the Catalan Institute of Finance has just opened to help care homes update facilities and adapt to the new criteria.
Minimum structural criteria
The accreditation process responds to a 2020 decree requiring centers wishing to work with the public system to meet minimum structural, technical, and legal criteria in order to continue being a supplier to the Generalitat. Last summer, the Social Rights Department gave a few weeks to submit the documentation, a deadline criticized by employers as too short.
For the president of the directors' association ASCAD, Andrés Rueda, the extension is a "shot forward" by the Generalitat to avoid having to give up thousands of public places. He maintains that 80% of the residences are in buildings constructed before 2015, the date of the exit. He complains that "subjective" criteria are being applied and that accreditation is denied if "documents are sent without a logo or the brand name of the bleach used is not specified."
On the other hand, the employers' association Upimir, which brings together small and medium-sized nursing homes, values the "facilities" that the Generalitat provides to the centers. The president of the entity, Ignasi Freixa, affirms that the process should have been carried out with "consensus and not by decree," but also indicates that everyone was warned of the conditions for continuing in the public system. Along these lines, the president of the employers' association of large nursing homes (ACRA), Cinta Pascual, affirms that since 2015 there has been "sufficient time" to adapt and that those who have not done so may be because the public contract "doesn't compensate" them.
To reassure the sector, the department has reported that centers that fail the examination for being a nursing home may be transformed into other services with lesser requirements, such as apartments for minors in care or shelters for women victims of gender-based violence.
