The dg of the Ulss 8 and the president of the Order
A family doctor talks to a patient and prescribes the treatment over the phone (Photo Ansa)
A family doctor talks to a patient and prescribes the treatment over the phone (Photo Ansa)
It’s the general practitioners’ escape. 86 are missing in the Ulss Berica. In 2 years there will be at least 120 empty seats. Almost 130,000 people from Vicenza are forced to move from one district or municipality to another to find a doctor on loan. It is increasingly difficult to rely on a trusted white coat, on an outpatient clinic near home. But Ulss CEO Berica Giusy Bonavina, who has always been a champion of local medicine, objects: “Today there is not a single Vicenza who does not have the coverage of a general practitioner, and we continue to work to activate new group medicines integrated that will eliminate several difficulties. This is what we are doing for Torri di Quartesolo ».
The manager agrees on some of the reasons that are making the scenario explosive, but looks further ahead and is not pessimistic: «The causes that led to this difficulty are real. The secretary of the Fimmg Stefani says something true. I for one am aware that the planning has not been completed, even if the choice of some general practitioners who, as the law allows, have opted to have 1,200 assisted instead of 1,500. But it is equally true that our Ulss is following this problem every day to ensure that the people of Vicenza have their general practitioner even if perhaps in a block away. The definitive solution will come from the community homes that will function as proximity hubs for primary care, but an answer could also come from the fact of offering, to those who are attending general medical school, the possibility of access, in the last year of training, to the activity as it already happens for the specialists ».
Michele Valente, president of the Order of Doctors, has been unnecessarily pointing out for years a crisis that has now become gangrenous and has become structural. «The dg Bonavina has sent me a letter in which he points out this deficiency and offers the possibility to young doctors to take over immediately to those who have retired or have renounced the agreement. I, thinking of the thousands of people, in Torri di Quartesolo are 4 thousand, who have to travel tens of kilometers for a visit or a prescription, I have transmitted it to 300 recent graduates. Answers? Zero”. And the prospects – says Valente – are not comforting: «40% of doctors who leave the specialization do not want to be a family doctor. The truth is that medicine has been emptied of professional content and filled with bureaucracy. Doctors have been turned into workers. The business logic considers the doctor a productive factor and the patient a consumer, it aims at quantity not quality. Other than humanism. Other than relationship, communication, orientation of paths. Those who can retire early, those who remain go into depression, and no substitutes can be found. The situation is dramatic. We don’t realize it because we are focused on something else ».
The troubled general practitioner is blowing up the intermediate steps with the result that a flood of people pours into the emergency room day and night. «There is no longer an external filter – reports the head physician Francesco Corà – not only because of the missing numbers but also because the formula of group medicine has distorted the personalized relationship between doctor and patient. In the past, the doctor knew everything about his client, family history, his state of health, past illnesses, anamnesis came out in an instant. Today the patient always finds himself a different doctor who knows nothing about who is in front of him. It is a dialogue between strangers. We start all over again. And, then, we prefer to come to the emergency room ».
Covid kills, sends to hospital, makes people forget other diseases, draws the entire health system back to the virus, but, when we wake up from the long pandemic night, we will find ourselves with a system strewn with wounds and gashes. It is alarm. Valente will launch it on October 30 at the Doctor’s Day which, after a year’s break for Covid, will see 400 recent graduates parading on the stage of the Municipal Theater.