From 8 to 20 alone. It happens at the Asl To 5. The doctor on call who today has the Sunday shift in the Chieri area (which extends to a piece of Asti) is managing by himself the patients who call the service during the weekend in absence of the family doctor. Andrea De Masi, who in recent days had confirmed that he was the only doctor in the day shift for an audience of one hundred thousand inhabitants, is today at work in total solitude. In reality there should have been three doctors on shift, the general director of To5 Angelo Pescarmona told Repubblica in recent days. Instead De Masi is alone. Evidently, even the subsequent searches for professionals willing to cover the shift have not given good results. The station, in fact, has been re-named “Chieri unica”.
The doctor must visit the people in the clinic and should also go to their homes. Then there are the incoming calls and many have been waiting on the phone. One and three. Not exactly a walk for twelve hours on a shift, considering that if you visit the clinic you will accumulate waiting on the phone and it covers an area of one hundred thousand inhabitants and with a distance of 30 kilometers between Chieri – where the medical guard is based – and for example Cisterna d’Asti.
In recent days, the Fimmg – the Federation of general practitioners – had reported the serious difficulties of continuity of care medicine, the flight of many doctors who choose family medicine or move to other companies where the situation is not yet so critical . The whole of Turin is in difficulty, the To4, the To5, the AslCittà di Torino. But the problem also extended to Asti and Alessandria. In short, the case of Chieri represents the tip of the iceberg. On Wednesday, the leaders of the Fimmg will meet the councilor for health Luigi Icardi and the issue, even if it was not on the agenda, must necessarily be addressed.
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