LOGROÑO, 22 October 2026. Socialist MP María Somalo called on Health Minister María Martín to disclose the “real”, dated waiting-list figures for the public healthcare system in La Rioja without delay. Somalo said that no officially confirmed primary data for the current year, 2026, was yet available. She said it was necessary to publish the figures transparently on the Portal de Transparenciaso that the public and parliament could scrutinise developments.
Somalo cited as the latest reference the waiting-list summaries published by the Ministerio de Sanidad (SISLE), with a reference date of 31 December 2025. This nationwide analysis is based on reports from the Autonomous Communities, which are responsible for the accuracy of their content. In Somalo’s view, this underlines the regional government’s duty to publish and update its own dated source tables.
Somalo criticised a discrepancy between public statements by the regional government and the available primary data. She said that announced improvements, for example in median waiting times, were not substantiated by published tables on the Portal de Transparencia or by official datasets. The MP also said that written information requests on waiting lists from the socialist group had so far gone unanswered.
The dispute is part of a nationwide debate about the methodology, frequency and verifiability of waiting-list statistics. Differences regularly arise between regional and national figures, for example because of differing reference dates, definitional questions or the inclusion of procedures outsourced to external providers. The SISLE tables dated 31 December 2025 currently serve as the official benchmark for comparison between the Autonomous Communities.
Somalo is calling on the government in Logroño to publish all relevant tables with clear dates, definitions and explanations of the methodology. Only then, she says, can developments in 2026 be reliably assessed and scrutinised by parliament. Without such primary figures, she argues, external scrutiny remains limited and political assessments are open to challenge.
Health Minister María Martín has not yet publicly commented on the current allegations in the level of detail outlined by Somalo. The information portal of Rioja Salud generally points to ongoing updates and comparisons with nationwide figures from the Ministerio de Sanidad. It remained unclear on Thursday whether and when the regional government would provide new, dated primary data for 2026 on the Portal de Transparencia.
Editor: Clara Simonichek (Article created with AI assistance).