The University Hospital Complex of Pontevedra (CHOP) is a public health institution and a teaching hospital established in 2012 that provides health services to the specialized region of the city of Pontevedra in Spain. It depends on the Galician Healthcare Service, and consists of three hospitals and one specialty center.
In 1439, Pontevedra had three hospitals: the Hospital Santiaguiño del Burgo, for poor pilgrims, the Hospital Virgen del Camino for lepers and, in A Moureira, the Hospital Gafos, located at the mouth of the river Gafos.[1] In the middle of that year, in 1439, D.ª Teresa Pérez Fiota, made a will to found a hospital to assist the poor, which would be called Hospital do Corpo de Deus, which, with time, would be known as Hospital of Corpus Christi and, later, in 1579, as Hospital San Juan de Dios, which would be demolished in 1896 to build in another part of the city a new hospital, the Provincial Hospital of Pontevedra.
The first major hospital in the city was the Provincial Hospital of Pontevedra. The decision to create this hospital was taken by the city council in 1890. In 1897, the first patients were accepted. In 1928 it was transferred to the Provincial Council of Pontevedra. At the hospital, preferably surgical, advanced operations were performed for its time. The hospital's doctors were of great importance in the life of the city. In 1936, the hospital was mainly used as a war hospital.
The second and largest hospital in the city is the Montecelo Hospital, established in 1973. It was inaugurated in May 1974 by the then Minister of Health, Licinio de la Fuente.[2]
The CHOP (Complejo Hospitalario de Pontevedra) was declared a University Hospital Complex (CHU) in November 2012.[4] The declaration as a University Hospital Complex (CHU) has allowed the hospitals of Pontevedra to offer courses in the University of Santiago de Compostela Medicine degree and other health science degrees such as Nursing or Physiotherapy, which are present on the Pontevedra Campus.
The Galician Government has launched the construction of a new hospital for the city of Pontevedra and its metropolitan area in 2020 with more specialities than the current one, including radiotherapy, nuclear medicine and neonatal and paediatric intensive care, and with a capacity of 724 beds. The new 10-storey hospital will be called Gran Montecelo.[5][6]
