A total of 237 people died in 2024 in the province of Tarragona while remaining on the waiting list for a surgical intervention. The figure slightly lowers that of 2023, when 250 deaths were registered, but remains above the levels that moved between 2015 and 2019, with around 200 annual cases. In the accumulated total between 2014 and 2024, the balance amounts to 2,764 deceased.
Salut specifies that the removal of a person from the registry due to death does not necessarily imply that the death is related to the pathology or the pending procedure. The department emphasizes that waiting lists are administrative records of access to the system and that they do not allow establishing a causal relationship between the waiting time and the cause of death without an individualized clinical analysis.
More healthcare pressure in Tarragona and Terres de l'Ebre
The Minister of Health, Olga Pané, already admitted in November that current demand exceeds existing supply capacity. In that context, she defended that the prioritization of cases is set based on the severity, functional impairment, and evolutionary risk of each patient.
"Priority is established according to the severity, functional impairment, and evolutionary risk of the case" - Olga Pané, Minister of Health
Pané also sets the horizon in 2026, with the aim of reducing average waiting times, cutting cases outside the reference time and optimizing diagnostic capacity through organizational measures, reinforcement of resources and greater efficiency in care circuits.
Among the processes with the fastest response, oncological ones do not usually exceed twenty days of waiting. In contrast, other specialties and procedures maintain high delays both in Camp de Tarragona and in Terres de l"Ebre.
The longest delays by specialty
Cataract surgery presents an average wait of 80 days in Camp de Tarragona and 90 days in Terres de l"Ebre. For a hip prosthesis, the delay is around 100 days in Camp de Tarragona and 90 days in Terres de l"Ebre. Knee prosthesis is around 100 days in both territories.
In outpatient consultations, significant delays also persist. The delay in allergology in the Terres de l"Ebre reaches 250 days. At the Verge de la Cinta hospital in Tortosa, the wait to see the allergist has increased from 129 to 250 days. In Camp de Tarragona, that same consultation has increased from 62 to 83 days.
The visit to the ophthalmologist remains at 100 days in Camp de Tarragona, while in Terres de l"Ebre it has been reduced by 40 days to stand at 80. In urology, the southern regions have gone from a wait of 200 days in March 2025 to 52 days in February 2026. In otolaryngology, Camp de Tarragona registers a delay of 174 days.
Lack of staff and derivations of activity
At Joan XXIII Hospital, some medical professionals perform interventions in other centers to alleviate waiting lists, in exchange for financial compensation to the external center. The situation has reopened the debate about the system's real capacity to absorb demand in the territory's public network.
"The waiting lists are not finishing reducing" - Marina Roig, delegate of CATAC CTS on the staff board of Joan XXIII
The union representative maintains that the problem is not limited to the lack of doctors. She also points to the shortage of graduates, nursing staff and cleaning staff, profiles that she considers necessary to sustain surgical activity. In her assessment, the volume of waiting lists largely depends on the economic resources allocated to healthcare.
The scenario in Tarragona leaves a double reading. There is a slight decrease in deaths on the waiting list compared to last year, but the figures are still far from normalizing and several specialties continue with high delays, especially in the Terres de l"Ebre, where healthcare pressure keeps open the difficulties of access to consultations and operations.