Río Carrión Hospital in Palencia: how to get to an appointment from Aguilar de Campoo, Guardo, Carrión de los Condes and Tierra de Campos, what the bus does and what a car with a driver that waits solves

Why do appointments from the whole province end up at the Río Carrión?

Because it is the province's only general hospital. The Río Carrión forms, with the San Telmo Hospital, Sacyl's Palencia University Healthcare Complex, and it holds the specialities, tests and surgery that the health centres of Aguilar de Campoo, Guardo, Carrión, Saldaña, Herrera or Paredes de Nava do not have; some specialities and treatments are also referred to the Valladolid hospitals, half an hour away on the A-62. Palencia is a long, narrow province with the capital in the south, so for the mountains and for Tierra de Campos a half-hour appointment means a lot of road. The province page says it: the Río Carrión receives patients from Aguilar, Guardo and Carrión, for whom an appointment is almost a whole day.

The hospital is in the south-west of the city, near the river Carrión and the exit towards Valladolid, outside the old town and far from the bus and railway stations, which stand together at the other end; it has parking and separate entrances for emergencies, outpatients and inpatient wards, and it is worth knowing which one you are heading for, because for an elderly person the walk between them is long. From the centre the council's city buses reach it; from the villages nothing direct does. Sacyl's scheduled medical transport is prescribed by the doctor when the patient cannot use ordinary transport, and everyone else makes their own way: in their own car, driven by a relative who takes the day off or with a driver.

How do you get there from the mountains: Aguilar along the A-67 and Guardo along the CL-615?

From Aguilar de Campoo you come down the A-67, the Cantabria motorway, past Herrera de Pisuerga and Frómista, and on reaching Palencia you skirt the city to the hospital without entering the centre; the province page speaks of around an hour, and the engine's exact figures are in the answer above. Aguilar has a station on the Santander line and there are trains to Palencia, but the train drops you at the station, at the opposite end of the city, and regional timetables are not designed around a nine o'clock appointment, so on getting off there is another leg to the outpatients door. Herrera, halfway along the same motorway, has the shortest run from the mountains and the Ojeda, with its own route page.

Guardo, a former mining area on the border with León, has the slowest road: the CL-615 comes down through Saldaña and Carrión de los Condes to Palencia, on a conventional road with no dual carriageway on any stretch; the alternative via the CL-626 to Aguilar and the A-67 is longer in kilometres and rarely pays off. In winter the snow and ice of the mountains make the first hours the slowest, and an early appointment means leaving in the dark. For the elderly people of Guardo and the surrounding villages, who are many, an appointment in Palencia is a full day, with the return in the afternoon during the short months; that is why the return booking, with the driver who waits, is the one most requested from there.

From Tierra de Campos: Carrión de los Condes, Paredes de Nava, Saldaña?

Carrión de los Condes sits on the CL-615, on the flat, and is the comarca's most repeated trip to the hospital, from 64,03 € for the whole car; Paredes de Nava, in the heart of Tierra de Campos, is 23 km away along straight provincial roads with frequent fog in winter; Saldaña, in the Carrión valley, comes down the same CL-615 as Guardo and has its own route page. They are medium distances, under an hour by car, but the bus network converges on Palencia bus station with one or two departures a day in many villages, and the combination with the city bus to the hospital turns a twenty-minute check-up into a full day.

Tierra de Campos also has a patient who does not live there: the pilgrim. The French Way crosses the comarca through Frómista and Carrión, and every season someone arrives at the health centre with tendinitis, an infected blister or a fall and ends up referred to the Río Carrión. The transfer is booked from the hostel or from the exact point on the Camino where the pilgrim is, with the backpacks in the boot, and on the way back it can drop them in Carrión to carry on with the stage or at Palencia station if they have to go home. For a resident, on the other hand, the usual case is the repeated appointment, and for those check-ups that come round every few weeks there are the fixed service and the programme for people over sixty-five.

And from El Cerrato: Villamuriel, Venta de Baños, Dueñas and Baltanás?

El Cerrato is the closest comarca and the one with the most repeated trips. Villamuriel de Cerrato works almost as a suburb of the capital and is 6 km from the hospital; Venta de Baños and Dueñas, beside the A-62, have short trips with a page each; Baltanás, the comarca's main town up on the moorland, is 28 km away. Here the problem is not distance but time and repetition: a dialysis, rehabilitation or oncology treatment that repeats several times a week, at hours when a relative is working, is what fills the hospital's mornings. The fixed service contracts that recurring transfer with the same driver and the same time, with one invoice a month.

From El Cerrato and the capital also go the referrals to Valladolid, when the speciality or the test is not at the Río Carrión: it is the same A-62, through Dueñas, and the booking is made with the address of the Valladolid hospital as the destination and the appointment time as the reference, with the return booked if the patient does not know how long it will take. The companion travels in the same car, because the price is per vehicle and not per person, and the booking can be made by a son or daughter from another city in their mother's name, with her phone number so that she receives the driver's details and the invoice to whoever is named. What is booked is what is provided: nobody promises cars available on the spot or any volume.

What is, and what is not, a transfer with a driver to an appointment?

It is not medical transport. There is no stretcher, no medical staff and no oxygen on board, which is why it suits anyone who can travel seated and get into the car on their own or with the companion's help: a folding wheelchair goes in the boot and, if an adapted vehicle with a ramp is needed, it is requested when booking and confirmed before the booking is closed, under the conditions on the accessibility page. What it is: a clean car with an identified driver and a fixed price, which arrives on time, knows the hospital's entrances and waits or comes back. For clinics, insurers, care homes and rehabilitation centres in the province that move patients every week there is the company account with a monthly invoice, explained on the clinics and hospitals page.

The price is fixed before booking with the address, date and time, and it is per car, companion included; waiting during the appointment is booked as part of the service and its conditions are on the help page, as is the cancellation policy if Sacyl moves the appointment. The invoice carries the details of the patient, a relative or a company, as requested, and serves for reimbursement by the insurers and mutual funds that accept it. At San Antolín, in early September, and during Holy Week the centre of Palencia is closed off, but the hospital lies outside the old town and access from the A-62 barely notices; valley fog, on the other hand, does call for a margin first thing in autumn and winter.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Sacyl · Complejo Asistencial Universitario de Palencia (Hospital Río Carrión y Hospital San Telmo) (consulted on 27 October 2026)
• Junta de Castilla y León · transporte sanitario no urgente y transporte interurbano de viajeros (consulted on 27 October 2026)
• Ayuntamiento de Palencia · autobuses urbanos y cortes de tráfico en San Antolín y Semana Santa (consulted on 27 October 2026)
• Ministerio de Transportes y Movilidad Sostenible · red de carreteras del Estado: A-67 y A-62 (consulted on 27 October 2026)