The Community of Madrid investigates alleged irregularities in the waiting lists at the Ramón y Cajal hospital

The Community of Madrid announced an investigation this Tuesday after EL PAÍS revealed the case of allegedly irregular changes to the Ramón y Cajal waiting list. The news was given by the Minister of Health, Fátima Matute, during an event this afternoon in which President Isabel Díaz Ayuso collected the award for politician of the year given by a health magazine. “Since we learned of this news, we have opened internal information proceedings to review our entire system again,” Matute told the journalists present, at the end of a day in which criticism from the health sector and the entire opposition has intensified for what happened at the hospital, one of the largest in Madrid's healthcare sector.

However, the counselor has anticipated the result: "I want to make it clear that in the Community of Madrid waiting lists are not falsified" and has also questioned the credibility of the complainant who delivered the documentation to this newspaper, the surgeon Luis Alberto Martos: "The truth is that the vile attack that is made on the excellence of Madrid's healthcare is sad, which of course is the treasure that I have to defend."

President Ayuso did not speak during her brief speech when collecting the award, from ConSalud magazine, which joins other previous recognitions from the private health sector. Ayuso highlighted that “Madrid's public system is first-class.”

It has been his advisor who has been in charge of defending the Community's position in this matter, which combines this investigation with a questioning of Martos. “I have to say that it is a lie that they are making up the lists, that it is a mantra that they try to make known and that of course they are based on the statements of a health worker who has an open disciplinary file long before he made these statements in the media,” he said.

Martos is the 62-year-old doctor from the Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology service who provided this newspaper with dozens of pages of internal information that proved the alteration, by order of two officials: the head of the service, Basilio de la Torre, and the medical director, Rafael Martínez. In addition, EL PAÍS contrasted his version with three other colleagues in his service.

The events occurred between February 28 and March 14, 2025, when the priority of 57 patients waiting for an operation changed. It was downgraded from urgent (which implies that the hospital must operate on them in less than 90 days) to normal (within 180 days). In this way, according to an email, time was gained to meet the productivity objective imposed by the Ministry of Health, at the cost of these patients waiting twice as long.

Martos had not hidden from EL PAÍS that in the spring of last year the manager initiated a file of internal conflict and harassment, at the request of the two responsible parties. According to the evidence shown, this procedure was opened after having internally denounced those two bosses.