Italian Healthcare System Facing Looming Crisis Due to Shortage of Family Doctors
Anyone who thinks that, after having overcome Covid, the national health system is ready for the worst is greatly mistaken. There is a black hole that risks swallowing up our national healthcare system and, above all, the health of millions of Italian citizens. This time it has nothing to do with unexpected pandemics, uncontrolled viruses, biological attacks and so on. The threat does not come from the outside, but is structural and intrinsic to the system and linked to a whole series of factors over which we have little or no control.
A concrete threat hangs over our healthcare system, and the health of citizens is paying the price. The potential consequences of this state of affairs are spine-chilling: here’s what could happen in a very short time. We absolutely need to take note of the condition we find ourselves in and understand how to move.
Let’s start with a simple fact: today in Italy there is a shortage of 3,114 family doctors, according to what was reported by the Gimbe Foundation. And the Italian Federation of General Practitioners warns that by 2026, a total of 11,439 doctors will turn 70, thus reaching the maximum retirement age. The numbers speak clearly: the risk of losing access to a fundamental right is concrete.
The gradual and apparently inexorable decrease in the number of general practitioners in Italy has serious repercussions on the quality of service to citizens and their health conditions. Latest data in hand, today in Italy there are just over 40,000 general practitioners, while in 2019 there were 42,428, and for the future the trend is further downward. According to the aforementioned Gimbe Foundation, there is 1 general practitioner for every 1,250 patients.
As Nino Cartabellotta, president of the Foundation, explains, “the alarm about the shortage of general practitioners today concerns all the Regions and is the result of inadequate planning which has not guaranteed generational turnover in relation to expected retirements. So often today it becomes a challenge to be able to choose a doctor close to home resulting in inconvenience and health risks, particularly for the elderly and frail”.
Another striking fact is that the most difficult situations are recorded in the large regions of Northern Italy, starting from Lombardy and Veneto, while the autonomous province of Bolzano has the highest number of patients treated by a family doctor: 1,646. The region that is doing best, for once, is Basilicata, at 1,090, compared to a national average of 1,353 assisted.
To alleviate the situation, the government has raised the retirement age of doctors employed in hospital facilities to 72, but for general practitioners the age limit remains at 70. The risk of losing access to a fundamental right is real.