by Ornella Mancin
25 OTT –
Dear Director,
the lack of family doctors in the North East is starting to be a relevant problem to the point of affecting the “market”. In fact, the news has come in recent days that the private service “First Care Centers” has been created in Treviso, where citizens unfortunately left without a general practitioner can contact them at the modest cost of 20 euros per visit.
The company that launched the idea proposes itself as an alternative to the expectations of the family doctor, medical guard and the emergency room as regards the white codes, at a rate defined in line with the amount of the ticket.
However, it is not specified that citizens who use this service will not receive prescriptions that can be spent in the NHS and therefore the economic impact on patients will be much more significant than the € 20 for the visit. If I go for tonsillitis at most I will have to add more or less 10 euros for an antibiotic, but if I go for a slightly more complex symptom, such as abdominal colic, knee pain or anything else that requires some assessment, I will have to also pay for the instrumental tests necessary to arrive at the diagnosis.
It is clear that the service offered cannot be defined as “paid family doctors” and the Treviso Medical Association did well to underline this, stating that the professional role of the general practitioner and continuity of care are regulated and defined by law and that citizens must know this clearly.
However, given the shortage of MMGs, especially in certain areas, the initiative is likely to have some success.
What is worrying is this further drift of health care towards the private sector which in this case is even more serious because it deprives citizens of the basic services essential to the health of the individual, the family and the community. Healthcare is becoming more and more the prerogative of a few and having to pay for essential services such as treating pharyngitis, bronchitis, gastroenteritis means making it clear that the universalistic system is breaking up and that art. 32 of the Constitution is losing meaning and value.
Given the birth of these centers (so far only in a town in the Treviso area but I have no doubt that they can also take hold in other parts), politics should reflect and study solutions if we do not want to see our SSN disappear definitively.
We need to make the work of the mmg beautiful and attractive, a job now loaded beyond belief by administrative and bureaucratic aspects that crush doctors who have been working for years, leading them to retire from the profession prematurely and removing young people who prefer to do something else or go abroad where the bureaucratic pressure is lower.
It takes about 10 years, post-secondary school, to get to be a doctor: is it possible that all this study could be used for the most part to compile papers? Where did the clinical reasoning, the medical examination, the doctor-patient relationship go?
The work of the family doctor has been debased of its most beautiful aspects: the relationship with their patients, the bond with their family from birth to death, being the point of reference for any health problem … The many administrative tasks / bureaucrats that have been trimmed over the years, every year more and more, have eroded our time and have undermined the doctor-patient relationship, making it more difficult and contentious.
This profession has become too heavy and very unattractive, the costs of managing the clinics are increasingly eroding the wages that have been inactive for years and the quality of life has become very bad. Why should young people choose all this?
The sooner the policy will realize this and the sooner perhaps it will be possible to reverse the trend and save one of the services that have made our NHS universal, egalitarian and fair.
Onella Mancin
Doctor of general medicine
October 25, 2022
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