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Andalucía guarantees your public surgery, your first specialist consultation, and your diagnostic tests within set times. When it misses, you have a right almost nobody uses. We can help you use it.
Under Andalucía’s wait-time guarantee (Decreto 209/2001 and 96/2004), public surgery must happen within 180 days for most procedures, 120 for the commonest; a first specialist consultation within 60 days; a listed diagnostic test within 30. Miss any of them, and you can be treated privately at the system’s cost. In 2023, 53,014 patients in Andalucía passed the legal surgery limit. Four filed a claim. There is no published count for the consultation and diagnostic clocks. The right is real. The system is built so it goes unexercised.
What this is, and what it is not
This is not a money-back guarantee. We will be straight with you: the reimbursement is capped at an old (1998) tariff, so you may owe the gap, and of the handful who claimed in recent years, only a small fraction of the amount claimed was paid. Anyone promising you a payout is selling you something.
What we do is make sure you do not leave the lever unused:
- Track your guarantee clock from your registration date, whether that is a surgical list (120/180 days), a first specialist consultation (60 days), or a diagnostic test (30 days), and flag the moment you pass it. If you are not sure you were ever put on the register, we check that first; a paper referral in your hand does not start any clock.
- Help you obtain the director’s certification confirming the limit was exceeded. That certificate is the key that unlocks any claim, and it expires after a year.
- File the reimbursement claim, or, where the delay has caused real harm, connect you with a Spanish lawyer who specialises in these cases (worked on results, not upfront).
- Where it makes sense, help you arrange a private consultation so you are not just waiting.
Who this is for
- You are on a Spanish public surgical waiting list and are past, or close to, the legal limit.
- You are waiting for a first specialist consultation or a diagnostic test that is past, or approaching, its 60 or 30-day limit, or you cannot find out whether you are officially on the waiting register at all.
- Or you want to understand your position and your options before you need them. The open-ended national doctors’ strike is confirmed from September (the last ministerial off-ramp was declined on 22 July 2026), and August’s Plan de Verano closures are already running across Málaga province. The decrees do not pause the clocks for either. Clocks started now are the ones that will matter this autumn.
Register your interest
Tell us where you are and what would help. This is an early sign-up while we build the service, so you will hear from us with the honest version of what the process involves and the next step. No obligation.
The honest caveats
- The reimbursement route rarely pays in full, and the process is deliberately bureaucratic. We help you run it properly; we do not control the outcome.
- Claims for damages caused by a delay are a separate, slower legal route handled by a specialist lawyer, and depend on proving harm.
- Nothing here is legal advice. It is help navigating a public-health right you already have.
Details last verified 4 August 2026.
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