Overview
- Coordinators from 12 public hospital emergency departments report activity up to 30% above previous peaks, setting record workloads.
- They warn of services near collapse with patients treated on stretchers in corridors, including 41 severe cases counted in Santiago on January 9.
- Chronic staffing shortfalls persist as the new Emergency Medicine specialty will only begin supplying residents this year, forcing frequent self‑coverage and driving exhaustion.
- Delays moving patients to wards and primary care waits of up to three weeks are turning emergency rooms into holding areas, with reports of reprogrammed non‑urgent surgeries and daily stoppages in Vigo.
- The Spanish Society of Emergency Medicine backs the chiefs’ communiqué, while the PSdeG filed parliamentary initiatives seeking a funded, urgent plan as the health minister cites flu‑driven hospitalizations and over 50,000 ER visits in late December.