Florence, 24 July 2022 – The service of emergency medical Service. Many of the stations are now uncovered due to a shortage of doctors. But the revolution is upon us. By September, the overall reorganization of the service will go into the regional council, which is linked in two ways with the reform of territorial medicine and, in some way, also with that of the emergency. In health care, when the balance of one sector is shifted, action must also be taken on the others.
The draft resolution is already written. The technicians knocked it down in months of work of the regional health department with the representatives of the trade unions of general practitioners. From Thursday it will be presented to the mayors to avoid what had happened three times in the last ten years and that is that once the resolution was made, the regional council was forced to a painful reverse due to the fuss of controversy raised by local administrators, but not only .
The reorganization provides for the medical on-call service to be suspended from midnight to about 8 60-70 workstations in Tuscany, in order to strengthen daytime services – with doctors relieved of the night shift. But a suitable number of stations will remain open even during that night time with respect to requests (from 24 to 8 are 6% of the total) in areas that will be selected on the basis of two criteria: the distance from the nearest emergency room and the massive tourist presence (based on the evaluation of flows).
How will it work? On holidays and the day before holidays from 8 to 24 and all other days from 20 to 24, the medical guard will guarantee telephone consultationshome and outpatient visits, drug prescriptions, certificates.
At night (from 24 to 8) you will have to contact the single switchboard of the ASL (in Florence at 0573.454545) and then to the single number 116117 (which will be activated with the control panel by the end of the year). The control panel will filter the calls of citizens who, as neededwill be sent to stations with a doctor or redirected to 118 for emergencies or emergencies.
Even in the cities the number of night stations will not be eliminated: for example in Florence there are now nine. With the reorganization, in addition to the telephone exchange, where nine doctors will be employed, one will probably remain. Maybe two, if the second is destined to home servicesmanaged together with the 118 control unit to avoid improper use of first aid.
All this is necessary not so much to cut. Because unfortunately the stations are currently uncovered: there is not enough staff. So the aim is to optimize and enhance services during the day and in the evening, when the greatest number of requests is concentrated: even the chronic patient, if managed correctly during the day, even at home, will hardly need non-urgent care at night.
The doctors who are released from that night service will fill the vacancies of family doctors and on-call medical service. And then to train them Ucathe continuity of care units with doctor and nurses for home care, born on the example of the Usca in service during Covid.
For all doctors it will be provided specific training, as in many cases they are recent graduates. The contract will likely go from 24 to 38 hours per week. Numbers will be needed because it will be necessary to have a doctor available for every 5 thousand inhabitants, that is to say about 750.