Nell’Palmanova hospital, in the province of Udine, eight emergency medical beds have been “erroneously declared with cod. 49 ‘intensive care’ “. The Italian Hospital Resuscitators Association Critical Area Emergency (Aaroi Emac) had denounced this last April to the President of Friuli-Venezia Giulia Massimiliano Fedriga. The report of the Ministry of Health drawn up after ainspection. And if for the councilor for health Riccardo Riccardi “No critical issues were found with regard to the activation and deactivation of Covid beds”, the oppositions invoke yours resignation. One problem, the number of beds in intensive care, which in the Region has returned to the top with the resumption of the infection in recent weeks.
“During site visit at the Palmanova plant – reads the note from the ministerial inspectors – awrong configuration already present in the pre-pandemic era “. Specifically, “there are eight beds of Emergency Medicine which are encoded with cod. 49 “Intensive care” “. This incorrect attribution – continues the note – “is also reflected in the reparametrations carried out pursuant to art. 2 DL 34/2020 with reference to the beds of cod. 49, to be activated to reach the new parameter of 0.14 beds per thousand inhabitants “. One figure – that of intensive care beds – is anything but irrelevant in times of Covid, since it helps to determine the risk range of the region and consequently the restrictive measures.
But that’s not all. The ministry’s report, in fact, also indicates “some structural limits” that have determined “overlaps” in the path of the Covid patients and not Covid: “The restaurant of the Emergency room dedicated to the visit and stay of the suspicious patients, where the dedicated room is a single room in which 4 technical beds are set up which, as they are organized, present an easy exposure to the mixture. Furthermore, the pre-triage placed inside creates an overlap of paths between suspected and negative patients “. A situation that “increases the level of risk of spreading the infection, as it determines the stay in the same room of patients who may already be positive with patients who are not”.
For the vice-president with responsibility for Health Riccardi “from the report sent by the Ministry of Health following the checks carried out this summer in the hospitals of Palmanova and Gorizia it clearly emerges that no critical issues were found with regard to activations and deactivation of Covid beds, which appear to have been regularly communicated ”, while“ the “Structural redevelopment” of the Emergency Department of the Palmanova Hospital “Is already programmed”. As for the issue of intensive care beds, “the specific coding dates back to the past and, in the absence of negative feedback from the ministry, has continued until today”. “The report has been acknowledged – concludes Riccardi – and a thorough analysis of all the ministerial flows is being carried out”.
The reaction of the opposition was not long in coming. “The president Fedriga relieves the commissioner Riccardi from his office or withdraws the delegation to health“, asks the M5S in a joint note from the deputy Sabrina de carlo and the regional councilor Andrea Ussai. “Riccardi, through a press release, stated that no critical issues emerged regarding the management of the Covid intensive care beds, voluntarily omitting numerous shortcomings reported in the report, which confirm the doubts that we had first raised already in April on the counting and classification of beds, then remarked also by the strong statements of the professionals, in particular by the regional anesthetists association “, which” on several occasions has underlined that in the whole of Friuli-Venezia Giulia there are 24 emergency area beds that were not to be considered as intensive care “.
The councilor of the Democratic Party is also added to the request for resignation Salvatore Spitaleri: “Anyone who has governed, as a politician or as a trusted person, the procedures and communications indicated by the inspectors as incorrect and inadequate, who has summoned and conducted the ‘trial’ immediately in Palmanova by the regional secretary of the Association must take a step back of anesthetists. The new is all the more worrying cry of alarm of health personnel, on first aid beds occupied by Covid patients awaiting assignment to specific departments, compared to the numbers that are communicated even today, precisely in light of the criticalities reported in the report of the ministerial inspectors. The findings of the professionals on the front line turn out to be dramatically truthful, while the institutional communications of the councilor for health appear unreliable ”.