And When I Woke Up In My Hospital Bed

Is Alcúdia about to lose its hospital? The rumours have been circulating for months. The “Diario” ran with this yesterday, and the report did little to quell those rumours.

The company that runs Hospital d’Alcúdia also runs the Hospital General de Muro, close by in Playa de Muro. With the recent opening of the public health hospital in Inca, one could argue that one private hospital in the area should be sufficient.

The Diario refers to this company as being Grupo Femenía. From what I can make out, this is right only up to a point. Last year, the Juaneda network reached agreement with Femenía to manage its centres; the Muro hospital has always been Juaneda. The incorporation of the Femenía centres was part of an expansion to make Juaneda the main player in private health care in Mallorca. Take a look at its website, and one finds much being made of “expansion”. For it to now be considering closure of Alcúdia seems a little surprising, given that management philosophy. There again, consolidation is a perfectly sensible management action, even if it appears to run counter to the main strategy.

Alcúdia’s mayor says that there will be a meeting to clarify the intentions, adding that there are agreements and obligations in respect of services at Hospital d’Alcúdia that have to be rendered, though - as the paper points out - he doesn’t elaborate as to what these are.

If the quality and availability of health care is unaffected or indeed improved by consolidation, it should not matter, but one suspects there is a degree of kudos lurking here. Alcúdia’s prestige might be knocked by Muro being home to the one hospital in the north.

Were the permanent population the only issue, then there would not be much need for debate. But it is not the only issue. Femenía was founded on the notion of providing health care in tourist centres. At present, the Alcúdia and Muro hospitals cater for the vast tourist population in the north as well as the permanent population. Irrespective of the opening of the hospital in Inca, one does wonder whether the closure of Alcúdia would create a strain.


Talking of the Diario, I must just mention something from its website the other day. On its home page was a photo of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez kissing model Naomi Campbell’s hand. Sweet. Immediately above the photo (and it was immediately above; there was no break between the two images) was an advert. It was for an escort service offering beautiful models for all events in Mallorca. I had to click both images to make sure that they were indeed separate. Coincidental or ...?


QUIZ
Yesterday - Don Henley, “The Boys of Summer”. Today’s title - it’s a line from which song? Clue: Perhaps best known is the version by an Irish group; the song itself has an Australian connection.

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