Chile Health Ministry Accused of Misrepresenting Hospital Network Decline

Chile’s health minister, Carmen Chomali, has claimed that the public hospital network has deteriorated under former ministers Ximena Aguilera and Jaime Yarza, citing a drop in the Comges compliance index from 86.7 % in 2021 to 68.6 % in 2025. Analysts note that the Comges methodology has changed repeatedly, making direct year‑to‑year comparisons unreliable, and that the newer, stricter targets focus on government‑set priorities such as wait‑times and GES guarantees.

The critique also conflates two separate evaluation tools – the Comges system for 29 health services and the Balanced Scorecard for 62 self‑managed hospitals – presenting them as a single figure of “deterioration.” Despite the disputed metrics, the public system recorded historic low wait‑times since 2016, a recovery in life expectancy lost during the pandemic, zero infant deaths from RSV, no co‑payment in Fonasa, and expanded coverage for high‑cost medicines, including triple‑negative breast cancer treatments.