The Minister of Health announces the arrival in the coming months of a law provision to deal with the shortage of personnel and the problem of long waiting lists. There is also provision for enhancement of the pension for those who work in the emergency-urgency services and tax exemption for additional work as well as a specific indemnity for the medical-health management. The announcement during today’s Question Time in response to a question from Us Moderates.
22 MAR –
“Ensuring the strengthening of human resources in the emergency services, on the one hand, and, on the other, discouraging the use of forms of outsourcing of health services which translates into an occasional and precarious employment of health professionals by the companies”. And again “the commitment to implement timely and relevant measures, including of a financial nature, to renew and encourage interest in the NHS, by all health professionals”. These are some of the measures announced by the Minister of Health, Horace Schillaci during today’s Question Time answering a question from Us Moderates. Measures that will be contained in a legal provision that will be presented before the beginning of the summer.
In particular, the Minister specified that the possibility of an increase in the hourly rates of additional services is being “studied, pursuant to article 115, paragraph 2 of the CCNL for health area management 2016-2018, especially with regard to the additional health services required for the reduction of waiting lists, so as to make the use of these services by companies and bodies of the NHS more incentive for the recipient health professionals as well as more useful for the community”.
In addition, the Minister intends “to envisage career bonus measures for those who agree to provide their service in the most committed and front-line departments, as well as thinking about tax exemption measures for additional work and specific allowances for medical and healthcare management”.
Finally, Schillaci also announced that in the provision there will also be “an enhancement for social security purposes, given the difficulty and discomfort of the work performed in the emergency-urgency services, in the awareness of the centrality of human resources for the development and functioning of the services hospitallers”
The complete response of the Minister of Health.
I thank the interrogators who allow me to recall what has already been partially set out in this Chamber in the Policy Guidelines presented just over a month after my inauguration.
Already on that occasion I had the opportunity to underline how the issue of the shortage of doctors and nurses should be considered in the same way as a real “healthcare personnel emergency”. An emergency that has distant origins and to which numerous factors have contributed, not least an incorrect assessment and planning of needs over time, with the growing increase in the relative average age of the personnel and an excessive rigidity of the limits on the expenditure of the employees which has made over time work performed in NHS bodies and companies is unattractive. With an overall outflow of around 31,600 professionals including doctors and nurses from 2001 to 2021.
The pandemic has made the critical issues more evident, with an increase in the phenomenon of resignations, for reasons other than retirement, and in the voluntary exodus from the national health service.
To the phenomena listed must then be added the chronic shortage of healthcare personnel especially in the Emergency Urgency departments, with the low approval rating experienced by the schools of specialization in Emergency Medicine and Surgery, Anesthesiology and others. All of this has prompted the companies themselves to adopt atypical forms of engagement, through the awarding of external contracts, sometimes of entire departments, with increasing costs no longer accounted for under personnel costs, but under those for goods and services.
The distorted use of outsourcing, however, not only generates an increasingly heavy burden on the structures, but also involves serious problems in terms of safety of care: both because it does not always offer adequate guarantees regarding the skills of the professionals involved, and due to the reduced loyalty of the latter to public structures, deriving from professional engagements distributed simultaneously over several offices, with consequent lack of knowledge on the part of the “shift workers” of the organization of the operating units in which they carry out their services.
On this complex distortion of the system, since the beginning of my mandate I have delegated the NAS to carry out specific checks on the cooperatives providing health services, from which cases of fraud and default in public supplies have also emerged. Furthermore, the supply of doctors older than that established contractually – even over 70 – and the outsourced use of human resources not suitable for the needs of specific hospital departments were ascertained.
Close to the beginning of my mandate, I set up a special working group with the aim of addressing the issue of the shortage of healthcare personnel and the consequent recourse by healthcare companies to external assignments. The topics that are being explored will form the content of new regulatory proposals, which I intend to adopt before the start of the summer.
The results of this work will flow into regulatory proposals, already partly well defined in their structure and in the overall container, aimed at ensuring the strengthening of human resources in emergency services, on the one hand, and, on the other, to discourage the recourse to the forms of outsourcing of health services described above which – as highlighted – translates into the occasional and precarious employment of health professionals by companies.
Together with the contrast to the irregular forms of engagement described above, my commitment is also aimed at putting in place timely and relevant measures, including of a financial nature, to renew and stimulate interest in the NHS, by all professionals sanitary.
In particular, we are studying the possibility of an increase in the hourly rates of the additional services, referred to in article 115, paragraph 2 of the 2016-2018 healthcare area management CCNL, especially with regard to the additional healthcare services required for the reduction of the lists of expected, so as to make recourse to these services by companies and NHS bodies more incentivising for the recipient health professionals as well as more useful for the community.
Furthermore, I intend to envisage career bonus measures for those who agree to provide their service in the most committed and front-line departments, as well as thinking about tax exemption measures for additional work and specific allowances for medical and healthcare management.
Furthermore, I am thinking of further regulatory initiatives – always to be adopted before the beginning of the summer – which take into consideration, also for a valorisation for social security purposes, the difficulty and inconvenience of work performed in the emergency services, in the awareness of the centrality of human resources for the development and functioning of hospital services
I conclude, hoping on a future occasion, to provide the Honorable Questioners – after having anticipated the contents today – the specific indications regarding the provisions adopted.
March 22, 2023
© breaking latest news
Other articles in Government and Parliament
