Exams and hospitalizations, health is still struggling. Long waits even for the seriously ill

Waiting lists still slow and hospitals full. The citizens of Como have been complaining for months that it is difficult to book exams and visits within the prescribed timeframe. One of the services particularly in crisis is the magnetic resonance. Readers explain that, after calling the regional switchboard, we have to wait until the end of the year or 2023 outside the province. The alternative, as usual, is to pay.

At the Sant’Anna counters the operators explain that there is a lack of availability. And so the patients, even the most serious oncologists, ask for help from doctors, from the most available primary care doctors. But even they struggle to find a place. Calling every day from outside means wasting hours hoping that some patient will not show up.

Chronically ill patients who have to carry out checks on a tight schedule every three or six months often find themselves phoning and wandering around the counters with the prescription in hand. When at least for the most delicate cases, patients who are struggling with cancer, for example, there should be preferential lanes.

Patients and families also report difficulties in being hospitalized. Yesterday the Valduce was so full that he asked the ambulances to go to the other garrisons equipped with first aid. «Around noon – explains the health director of Valduce Riccardo Bertoletto – the emergency department became clogged and the hospital beds quickly ran out. An unpredictable saturation. We then tried to bring in some patients in the face of some discharges ». Blocking one hospital always creates a ripple effect on others. “In recent months we have been trying to the maximum of our possibilities to carry out examinations and visits – explains the medical director – but the requests seem to increase faster than the system’s capacity. And therefore the expectations remain ».