The institutions
Nowadays, the Espriu Foundation represents two major cooperative groups: on the one hand, the Barcelona network, which includes the Autogestió Sanitària cooperative (which owns the insurance company Assistència Sanitària) and the SCIAS cooperative (which owns Barcelona Hospital). On the other hand, there is the broader Spanish network to which the insurance company ASISA and the co-operative Lavinia belong.
These entities span a broad ecosystem of hospitals, medical centres, insurers, technology companies and more. They are democratically managed, with a focus on both physician and patient satisfaction, and reinvest their profits in technological innovation and improving the quality of healthcare.
The Espriu Foundation’s institutions, in numbers
3.2 million policyholders
19 hospitals and 40 fully owned medical centres
181,303 cooperative members
7,500 employees
This is the history of each of these entities
Autogestió Sanitària is a medical services cooperative based in Barcelona, founded in 1978 and made up exclusively of doctors who are members of the province's Medical Association. All of them are shareholders in Assistència Sanitària and the vast majority practice as members of its medical network.
It is the majority owner of the Assistència Sanitària medical insurance company, which was founded in 1957. Its aim is to develop a form of social or collective medicine which is satisfactory for professionals and users alike, bringing the opinion of the former to the health co-operative movement through an ongoing dialogue with users.
Scias is a consumer and user co-operative based in Barcelona, founded in 1974 by the policyholders of Assistència Sanitària. It is the owner of Barcelona Hospital and is responsible for its management.
Scias was set up with the aim of providing its members with quality care facilities where professionals have the appropriate resources to care for them, while at the same time involving them in the shared management of Grup Assistència.
ASISA is a leading healthcare provider with coverage throughout Spain. Founded by Dr Espriu in 1966, its cooperative status enables it to devote the profits obtained each year to the effective improvement of healthcare quality. It is an organisation managed by doctors, with its own model based on reinvestment and focused on caring for people's health and wellbeing.
Based in Madrid, Lavinia is a healthcare cooperative created in 1977 by Dr. Josep Espriu and that currently includes 10,000 doctors.
Lavinia focuses on social medicine and is the owner of Asisa and the HLA Hospital Group.