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In order not to make citizens who need treatment wait longer, hospitals will have two options: on the one hand they will be able to convince doctors and nurses to spend a few more hours in the ward by paying them better and above all reducing tax on overtime compensation, on the other hand, if it is not possible to do so with the resources available, then the ultrasound, MRI or surgery will be purchased from a private individual. Here is the recipe that the Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci is working on in recent days in view of the maneuver to try to cure the biggest plague that afflicts the National Health Service, that of waiting lists.
The plan under study
A detailed plan is being studied with at least 300-350 million available which also envisages the advent of a national authority to deal with strict control of what happens in hospitals and in the area, monitoring not only the organization – we are thinking of agendas unique public-private bookings at a regional level which should have been active for years – but which “ex post” also verifies distortions and waste which contribute to lengthening the waiting lists: those family doctors or specialists in particular would end up in the crosshairs who prescribe too many services that are not needed and for this reason they clog up the machine, penalizing those who need, perhaps even urgently, an ultrasound or a CT scan. Experts call it prescriptive inappropriateness which could reach up to 20% of prescriptions, a phenomenon that has also exploded due to defensive medicine. Over-prescribers would be reported by this Authority to their local health authorities who would then have to understand the reasons and find out if there is any inappropriateness.
But what could this Authority be? The most suspected is Agenas, the Agency for regional health services and digital health, which already manages all ASL information flows for ASL and produces updated reports on waiting lists.
The intervention to reduce waiting lists
It was Schillaci himself in recent days who gave a glimpse of the lines of this cry against the waiting lists that will be included in the maneuver: «I believe we need an authority that controls what happens in the individual Regions, controls what happens performance by performance and is able to intervene quickly – explained the minister – if the waiting list for a specific diagnostic test in a specific region or for a surgical operation grows longer; we need to act and in some way if necessary buy and have the citizens perform the service.” Even Prime Minister Meloni in recent days between the lines has indicated the path towards healthcare: “It is not necessarily enough to spend more to solve problems if those resources are then used in an inefficient way.”
Healthcare financing
However, Healthcare is in the process of maneuvering, even if it is very unlikely that it will have the 4 billion more requested by Schillaci, it should reach or come close to the 3 billion mark, funds which will also allow the Government to be able to say that there are no cuts in Healthcare for 2024 given that in this way the health fund would rise, even if only by around one billion, above the 134.7 billion in 2023 (the Nadef does not in fact take the maneuver into account). In the menu of the budget law, in addition to the waiting list plan, there is also the possibility of reducing taxes on the allowances of doctors and nurses, resources to finance new essential levels of assistance (200 million per year for 3 years), interventions on medical devices (on which a one billion payback still hangs) and an adjustment of the spending ceilings on pharmaceuticals with the passage also of conditionally innovative drugs into the Fund for innovative drugs.