2022 will be a crucial year for health. Behind there is the pandemic that has brought out various areas for improvement of our health service, in front there are the financing of the Budget Law and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan: this is a total figure of about 50 billion in total . Where to start? What are the tracks on which we must think about redesigning health care? What are the construction sites to open immediately to build a health service together that concretely responds to the needs of Italians, both in emergencies and in ordinary situations?
To understand this, Janssen Italia commissioned a study from the Censis Foundation which, through direct listening to the regional health authorities – responsible for managing the service for citizens – outlined “The construction sites for the health of the future”. “During the emergency we wanted to listen to the needs of citizens with regard to health and we also involved institutions and technicians to try to seize the important opportunity we face”, said Massimo Scaccabarozzi, president of Janssen Italia and Head of External Affairs of Johnson & Johnson during the talk organized by Salute “The health that will come”. “What emerged is the centrality of the human factor, which is a general desire, and then two specific needs, greater digitization and proximity medicine”. To discuss it, together with Scaccabarozzi, Antonio Gaudioso, head of the technical secretariat of the Minister of Health, Alessio D’Amato, councilor for health and health integration of the Lazio region, Raffaele Donini, councilor for health policies of the Emilia-Romagna Region, and Manuela Lanzarin, councilor for health and socio-health planning of the Veneto region.
The staff knot
During the emergency months we called them heroes, but now it’s time to give doctors and nurses a perspective in terms of work and organization. “During the pandemic, the Veneto Region was able to count on the fact that territorial medicine has been practiced here for some time, but it is difficult to plan for the future if we have to deal with the historical and dramatic shortage of personnel,” said Lanzarin. It is therefore essential to be able to count on the possibility of stabilizing or hiring doctors and nurses, also to be able to train multidisciplinary teams in the area and ensure the correct care of patients, especially chronic ones. Gaudioso has no doubts either: “with funding we must produce tangible changes for citizens. These also include hiring staff and long-term planning. All Regions must be able to do this and we cannot look at the budget with the same eyes with which we looked at it before Covid “.
Shopping
Stress is a word that health care professionals are familiar with, but which today cannot have the same meaning as it did two years ago. “We are happy to see that the territorial assistance model that Emilia-Romagna has been building for decades has partly merged into the NRP. However, we know that we too must improve services but, despite the funding, as long as the costs for Covid are considered to be borne by the Regions and not by the national health system, the system will not be sustainable “, Donini pointed out. “So we are producing a deficit.” In recent years, many regions have been commissioned precisely because of the deficit accrued in health management. “But now the time has come to think differently: most likely the problem was also that of a constant under-financing of health care. It is enough to look at the other great European nations to understand that this is the case ”, underlined Scaccabarozzi.
Digitization
Making the health service more digital is one of the needs that Censis has raised from citizens. But it’s not just about developing some apps or guaranteeing remote visits. “We are not just talking about improving one link in the process but about reforming the whole process,” says D’Amato. “The advantages are there for all to see but we must improve on the cyber security front and have shared rules on privacy, which protect citizens but also allow those who manage health care to process data so that they can be used for prevention and programming”. Telemedicine in this sense can also act as a tool for the appropriateness of performance, allowing on the one hand the different health professionals to better coordinate in the management and on the other hand supporting the patient in orienting himself within his own path of care. Then there is the problem of digital literacy, both of citizens and of medical staff, and the great opportunity to improve the appropriateness of services thanks to the sharing of the clinical-diagnostic plan among different doctors, who can be consulted remotely in time. real.
Collaboration
Among the various lessons that the pandemic has left us there is certainly that of the value of collaboration between institutions, industry and health professionals. “We must work so that the collaboration continues and all the Regions are able to seize the opportunity and adapt health services to people in the best possible way”, concluded Gaudioso. “The funding we have available must really change people’s lives.”
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