by Luciano Fassari
At a hearing in the Social Affairs Commission on the implementation of the NRP, the Minister of Health announces that the text of Ministerial Decree 71 on the territorial health reform to be issued by 30 June will soon be sent to the Regions. Further resources are also arriving from the EU for southern healthcare. And then on family doctors he closes the hypothesis of addiction: “It is necessary to define a strong connection between family doctors, community homes and the district. But the doctor’s office has a function of trust and proximity that must remain so. A new Acn will be needed “.
15 FEB – “Proximity, action and equality are the three key words of our intervention with the NRP. Proximity healthcare to be closer to people must take deeper roots in the territories, it is the first choice we make and to achieve this objective we need reforms and investments together ”. Thus began the Minister of Health, Roberto Speranzaduring the hearing in the Chamber’s Social Affairs Committee on the state of implementation of the NRP with a specific focus on territorial assistance.
“The closure of the hospitals, the reduction of the presence of those structures in the area took place without investments to strengthen the primary assistance network in the territories”, he added, “this has resulted in an overcrowding of the hospitals”. For Speranza now we must work to strengthen the territorial network of primary care: “We have allocated 7.9 billion for community homes and taking care of people, homes as the first place of care, home care and telemedicine, development of intermediate care, or community hospitals, we also invest 12.33 billion in training, research, digitalization ”.
After the premise and the list of measures envisaged by the NRP which provides, among other things, the construction of 1,350 community homes, 400 community hospitals, 280 digital interventions, 300 hospital sustainability interventions, over 4 billion for the technology park, 50 million for artificial intelligence and 520 million for biomedical research, Speranza announced that “June 30 is the deadline for approving the reform of territorial assistance (Ministerial Decree 71 ed.). In these days we are counting on sending all the documentation to the State-Regions conference. We are on time to achieve this strategic objective “.
And in this sense, remembering how the Community houses they will be the “heart of the territorial network”, he specified that “we are working on general medicine, a fundamental element of the reform” with “the goal is to define a strong connection between family doctors, community homes and the district”. Speranza specified that “the offices of family doctors will be the spokes of the homes of the hub community”.
“We have to through a new NHS to break a distance between the work of the general practitioner and the rest of the NHS because the doctor ends up feeling more alone and the NHS fails to connect with the first intervention point”, clarified the Minister closing the hypothesis of addiction.
“I am working with the regions and with the trade unions – he specified – to find a solution. For me we must not disperse the value of trust and proximity of family doctors especially in the internal areas but we must try to build a relationship with the district. And the community house will be precisely that place where there will be the bond “. “The doctor’s office has a function that must remain that way but another piece of the general practitioner’s workload must be outside the office in the district structures.”
But the Minister then announced that in addition to the resources of the NRP and the National Health Fund “they will arrive 625 million more from the EU commission for an operational plan for the health of the South that we will use for gender medicine, health poverty and I will insist on cancer screening in the South “. The target of the National Health Plan for the South will be “the 7 Southern Regions that experience in various ways greater organizational difficulties of health services and that, for some essential levels of assistance, fail to ensure the full provision of services, especially towards vulnerable population groups “.
The aim of the National Plan, Speranza also explained, will be “to make access to health and social-health services more equitable by proactively taking care of people and groups of the population with greater vulnerability”.
Also touched on the theme of digital health that “is the key to our future for relaunching the NHS in the context of the NRP, helping to reduce territorial gaps. A national telemedicine platform will be created and telemedicine services will be activated at a regional level “.
“There will then be – he said – a relaunch of training of health personnel: 2,700 additional specialization grants for 101 million will be funded. There will also be an extraordinary training plan on hospital infections for an amount of 80 million ”.
“In recent years, progress has been made, now vaccines and tampons are made in pharmacies, for example. In the model of proximity healthcare, the service pharmacy is the place of first contact between the citizen and the NHS. We have given a signal in these two years and now we must insist, ”the Minister said.
Luciano Fassari
February 15, 2022
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