Puerto de Sagunto family calls for review of health care coordination after sepsis case
A family from Puerto de Sagunto has asked Valencia's health service to jointly review the care given to a relative hospitalised with sepsis, after the 112 ambulance took about an hour to arrive.
Puerto de Sagunto is once again at the centre of a debate about public healthcare: a family from the town has formally asked Valencia's health authorities to jointly examine how the case of a relative was handled, after that relative ended up hospitalised with sepsis just hours after leaving a Valencia hospital with a medical discharge. That is according to El Periódico de Aquí, which traces the roots of the debate to a lack of coordination between different levels of the system: primary care, the main referral hospitals in the regional capital, and the 112 emergency service, all involved in the timeline of this case within the Sagunto health area.
The background goes back several months, when the patient began suffering recurring urinary problems. The local health centre kept prescribing different antibiotics, but according to the family, the urology specialist appointment their GP had promised never materialised. The situation changed abruptly weeks later: a sudden episode of mental confusion combined with an inability to walk forced a visit to the emergency department of a major hospital in Valencia, where tests confirmed a urinary infection. After assessing the patient, the medical team decided to discharge them.
That is where the family's first doubts arise: they say that on leaving hospital, the patient was still not properly oriented and could barely stand. Back home, far from improving, the condition worsened over the following hours — high temperature, deeper disorientation, and a sudden dependence for the most basic tasks. With those symptoms on the table, another primary-care professional reviewed the hospital report and test results the next morning and advised an immediate return to a medical centre.
The family then decided to call 112. However, they say around sixty minutes passed without any ambulance arriving, after which they decided to drive the patient themselves, in their own car, to Hospital de Sagunto (Sagunto Hospital). The admission happened without delay: tests showed the urinary infection had progressed into sepsis, with fever spikes close to 39°C, episodes of delirium, and breathing difficulties over the following days. The patient remains hospitalised today, with what the family describes as an improvement, though still under constant medical watch.
Those close to the family stress that they are not trying to blame any individual healthcare worker or allege malpractice. Their complaint focuses on three very specific points: why the promised urology referral never came through, what criteria allowed the discharge to go ahead despite clear disorientation, and what went wrong with the 112 response. They are calling for a joint review involving the health centre, the Valencia hospital, the emergency service, and Hospital de Sagunto itself, and have offered to hand over whatever medical records are needed.
This is not the first complaint of its kind to come out of the Sagunto health area. Weeks earlier, in mid-August, other patients had already come forward over waits of more than six hours in the Emergency Department of Hospital de Sagunto. The two episodes together reinforce a feeling among Camp de Morvedre residents that response times in the public system deserve scrutiny that goes beyond a single case.
It is worth recalling what the condition that ultimately led to hospitalisation actually involves: sepsis occurs when the body reacts in an uncontrolled way to an infection and ends up damaging its own organs and tissues, and urinary infections are among the most common triggers. The associated mortality figures are high — up to 30% in general cases, 50% in severe sepsis, and up to 80% in septic shock — which is why medical protocols prioritise a fast response that is well coordinated across services.
The family has committed to providing whatever is needed to reconstruct exactly what happened, hoping the review will help improve healthcare coordination across Camp de Morvedre and prevent another household in the district from going through something similar. Source: El Periódico de Aquí, with additional background from Wikipedia on sepsis.