HAMMER – Unloaded from his trunk family doctor. He is making Martellago discuss the case reported by a forty-six-year-old local refused by his doctor, with a communication sent by the latter to theUlss 3 on 23 September, and informed of the objection with a subsequent, formal letter dated 27 September sent to him by the Operational Unit Cure Primaries of the health care company. A letter also inviting him to choose a new treating doctor within 16 days, after which he will be without health care. Moreover, it is the same doctor who jumped to the headlines between July and August for a quarrel with a patient, who then felt ill outside the clinic, ending up in the emergency room and denouncing the fact also to the president of Veneto. A doctor also known for cat that he kept in the studio.
THE REQUEST
Not that the patient has torn his clothes: he was the first, on July 31, to ask to change general practitioner by submitting an application to the health district of Martellago. The request, however, was not accepted because the forty-six-year-old had asked to go to a doctor, the same doctor as his partner, who no longer had places available. And it is presumably this request, of which the doctor must have been informed, that has determined the answer for the rhymes. The man swears that he had never had any altercations with her. “He was simply always unavailable, he only rarely answered me about it Whatsapp and I asked to change it. She must have felt offended, and she decided to refuse me first as a patient – explains the forty-six year old – The only thing that bitters me is that I didn’t even receive a phone call from her to understand what were the problems that had pushed me to ask to change it. Now I will resume the research: I have no big claims, I just need a person who knows how to do his job and who answers when he is called ».
And it is to get advice on which new general practitioner to indicate, that the rejected patient brought his story to the attention of social media, sparking the debate. Many, in fact, faced with this completely unusual case, were baffled by wondering whether it is ethical and even legitimate for a doctor to refuse a patient: there are even those who have suggested reporting everything to the court of the sick.
IT CAN BE DONE
Family doctors can refuse a patient as foreseen by the national collective agreement and by the Legislative Decree 502/92, if however there are “exceptional and verified reasons of incompatibility”. Is it enough for a patient to request to go to another doctor to trigger the incompatibility? For the doctor, and for the Ulss which endorsed the objection, obviously yes.
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