Rome, a 98-year-old woman, cardiologically ill and daughter of a retired hospital doctor, turned to the Single Booking Center and was scheduled for an almost routine cardiological exam 7 months later. “Before there is no availability”.
Reporting the umpteenth case of a regional health system now out of control is the son of the almost centenary lady, Luciana Lollobrigida, a pensioner from Prenestino. The man is a former hospital doctor now retired and has decided to contact the Giustitalia association to obtain not so much compensation from the ASL, as for having been forced to go to the tested for the tests of the mother with heart disease and to report yet another scandal of a system that “is now in pieces”.
The usual excuse from the ASL: “The general practitioner did not fill out the prescription correctly”
Faced with a 98-year-old woman who needs a specialist but not impossible examination, the competent local health authority is Rm2, and will retreat with the usual excuse that the general practitioner did not fill in the “urgency” field when filling out the electronic prescription, but it would have been enough to read the woman’s date of birth to understand how an examination set seven months after the request for a 98-year-old woman or an attempt to lengthen her life, or else it is a cynical system to save on performance in the hope that the over ninety pass away before a cardiologist can verify his health.
The son, a former hospital doctor, denounces: “I’ll explain what doesn’t work”
But the woman’s son is determined to give battle: “At stake are not the 400 euros of the private examination – explains the former hospital doctor – but the denunciation of what is happening to public opinion. By law, if a service cannot be provided within 120 days, the general manager of an ASL must authorize it intramoenia and/or if he is unable to authorize a visit to a private facility at the expense of the ASL. Instead they pretend nothing happened and hope that people don’t ask to obtain their rights. As for the efficiency of hospitals, here too the “public” should ask themselves why they take twice as long to carry out an examination compared to private individuals, with the result that on average half of the activities are performed in twice the time. Now I hear the new president allocating millions to modernize the machinery of public facilities when in reality they are underutilized. It is good for the president to know what the local health directors say when he wonders why the equipment is underused: “I have to talk to the trade unions about it”. “Here – concludes the father of Mrs. Lollobrigida: health care in Italy comes after union agreements”.
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