Patient complaints
Rsponsee to complaint dated June 17, 2025 - Received online on June 28, 2025
SUMMARY of the response: In point "3," please review the complaints again and look for any pending complaints from 2024, addressed NOT only to the Hospital, but also to several departments, including the Ministry of Health.
In point "4," we greatly appreciate the prompt resolution to the air conditioning problem, something that many patients who come to the emergency room will surely appreciate.
In point "5" you make "textual" mention (In this sense, the Customer Service Department (SAU) is promoting the submission of complaints in official registries and electronic headquarters) You comment that it is being "promoted", at no time do you mention or explain that it is any "order" or article duly regulated by the Ministry of Health, nor any direct order from Hospital Management, so the official or officials who refuse to reseal any complaint presented to them in patient care will be directly responsible for skipping or failing to comply with their obligations as public officials:
Ethical Liability
Liability for Omission occurs when what should be done is not done in accordance with the principles and rules of ethical conduct.
Administrative or Disciplinary Liability:
Administrative liability, also called disciplinary liability, affects officials and agents only in their functions, not in their assets or persons. This occurs when an agent commits a breach of service, violating the rules of public service. The penalties may include: reprimand, suspension, dismissal, or exoneration.
Royal Legislative Decree 5/2015, of October 30, approving the revised text of the Basic Law on Public Employees. It provides that "The obligation of the person who has caused harm extends to damage caused by those under their dependence, or by the things they use, or that are in their care. They must fulfill their duties respecting the principles and ethical guidelines established by law: honesty, good faith, etc.
Civil Liability: Civil liability is incurred when an official's conduct results in harm or injury to a third party outside the administration. "The law is equal for all" is a fundamental principle of the rule of law, which implies that the law applies equally to all people, without discrimination, and that no one is above it.
In Spain, the principle of "ignorantia juris non excusat" establishes that ignorance of the law does not excuse one from compliance. This means that even if a person does not know a law, they are still obliged to comply with it and may be punished if they violate it. The law It is presumed to be known to all once it has been published and enters into force.
Therefore, if a civil servant receives an order from a superior and the latter does not bother to find out whether he or she may be committing an illegality or arbitrary act (which is the case at hand), he or she would be directly responsible for carrying out that order, regardless of the responsibility of the superior who instructs his or her subordinates to carry out that order.
Civil servants have a union service (which, by the way, all Spaniards pay for, and which is not only at their service to reduce their working hours) that they can use to question any order given by a superior and find out whether it is arbitrary or if they are abusing citizens by carrying out illegal or unlawful orders, since they are not properly regulated or lack legitimacy.
Issuing an order or forcing citizens (all of them) to use electronic means to file a complaint is, at the very least, a deterrent and arbitrary measure to avoid that there are complaints, for example, the vast majority of people who go to an emergency service are elderly people who, the vast majority will be unaware of new technologies to be able to make a complaint, not to mention that they must also have an electronic DNI, know the password, have the DNI certificates without expiry, have a computer, internet, DNI reader, know how to use the electronic signature application and a long etcetera of procedures that, only in my understanding and that of many people, make it impossible to make a simple complaint that can be made in the same place where the patient is at that moment, which is what the patient care service is for, it is regulated by the budgets of both the State and transferred to the Autonomous Communities and this measure that tries to implement the SMS, directly attacks the interests and rights of citizens, with the sole purpose, NOT to speed up and improve citizen care, but to try to have the fewest complaints possible and thus mask
