Communiqué of the Valencian Society of Family and Community Medicine (SoVaMFiC) in response to the call for a strike by family doctors and primary care pediatricians in the Valencian Community

The SoVaMFiC is a scientific society committed to Family and Community Medicine and Primary Care. Our objective is the advancement of evidence-based scientific knowledge that allows citizens to achieve the highest degree of well-being.

Likewise, both the Board of Directors and the vast majority of partners are medical doctors, so the day-to-day situation is not far from reality, but rather we are good connoisseurs of how the primary care crisis It is impacting families and neighborhoods.

This is why, before the strike call of Primary Care physicians (see negotiation points here) for January 17 and 18, 2023, formulated by the CESM-CV Medical Union (currently in the process of negotiation with the Ministry of Health), from SoVaMFiC we want to point out some aspects that we consider fundamental are taken into account to guarantee the excellent quality of care that Valencians deserve.

Although with labor demands, CESM-CV takes a step forward by legitimately calling a strike of the Primary Care physicians of the Conselleria de Sanitat Pública y Universal de la Comunidad Valenciana, SoVaMFiC wants to put the accent in Another questions that are more concerned with the concept of our specialty as the undisputed protagonist of the first level of care.

Numerous health platforms and organizations, including SoVaMFiC, have diagnosed the situation of the health system both before and during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic, and we have submitted proposals for the transformation and modernization of the health system.

Several reports urge the reinforcement of Primary Care, not only from a conceptual point of view as the axis of the health system, but also as the essential element (together with Public Health) in response to possible future pandemics.

The lack of criteria in human resource planning in previous years has led to a profound crisis in Primary Care as a whole through the devaluation of its central figure: the specialist in Family and Community Medicine.

Validating the previously mentioned union demands, the real change goes through systemic transformation actions (also legislative and regulatory) that allow addressing the core of the problem: professionals, organizations and prestige.

Among these actions SoVaMFiC proposes as a priority:

1. Prioritize ownership of specialty in Family and Community Medicine in any public tender or contracting process, putting it before any other doctor without an official degree and who is taken into account as a merit in the OPE. This is one of the elements that will make it possible in the short and medium term to give prestige to the specialty, to guarantee the quality of the service and the safety in caring for people.
2. Increase very substantially (up to 40% of the total number of MiR seats) Family and Community Medicine positions in accordance with the objective criteria issued by independent reports and by the Ministry itself. At the same time, they urge the improvement of the working conditions of professionals undergoing specialized health training. Provide the means and resources to the Teaching Units to undertake such an important mission.
3. offer a professional stability planto the, which helps to link the professional activity of the new specialists via MIR in the Primary Care of the Valencian Community. Accredit more educational centers (taking advantage of the new Specialty Program planned to be implemented in 2023)
4. Implementation of the subject in Family and Community Medicine in all the medical faculties of the Valencian universities, being recognized as a specific area of ​​knowledge and, therefore, endowed with the necessary academic faculty capable of transferring the values ​​of the profession to the undergraduate student
5. Promote new models of professional organization that grant greater autonomy in decision-making in primary care centers. In a scenario of lack of professionals, new organizational models will be needed applying principles of self management, beyond necessarily limiting our agenda. Periodically recognize the centers with the best results in the evaluation indicators of Primary Care.
6. Redefine the Professional careers of specialists in Family and Community Medicine, to make them desirable, to correct the existing imbalance in the ratios of 3rd and 4th degree courses between hospital settings and Primary Care settings.

Finally, we advocate the development of a Primary Care and Community Health Act, following the example of Public Health (with its own law). A law guaranteeing the citizen, with fundamental axes: (Axis 1) Universality of care; (Axis 2) guarantee of development and evaluation of the dimensions of the PA (accessibility, coordination, efficiency, resolution capacity, etc.); (Axis 3) guarantee of the service portfolio and the provision of financing to comply with the previous axes. A financing that, as has been requested until exhaustion and following international recommendations, must amount to 25% of the health budget.

SoVaMFIC Board of Directors

January 10, 2023