The NHS risks cracking. The Regions issue a new alarm to the Government: “Insufficient resources for healthcare, sustainability of budgets at risk and staff shortages create daily disservices”

by Luciano Fassari

Letter from the Regional Health Councilors to the Ministers of Health and Economy: “The economic-financial sustainability of health budgets is strongly compromised by the insufficient level of funding of the NHS. Added to this are the serious problems concerning the need for personnel, employees and those with special agreements, whose shortcomings have reached an unsustainable critical level”. Asked for a comparison “with the utmost urgency”. THE LETTER

14 GEN –

“The economic and financial sustainability of health budgets is strongly compromised by the insufficient level of funding of the National Health Service, by the failure to finance a significant portion of the expenses incurred for the implementation of measures to combat the Covid-19 pandemic and for the implementation of the vaccination campaign, by the considerable increase in energy costs incurred by accredited public and private health and social care facilities, by the continuous increase in the prices of raw materials, materials and services due to the inflation trend”.

This is what the coordinator of the Health Commission of the Regions writes, Raffaele Donini in a letter sent to the Minister of Health, Horace Schillaci and to that of the economy, Giancarlo Giorgetti in which he notes that in the meeting of last January 10, “all the Regions and Autonomous Provinces were extremely concerned about the dramatic situation in which the Regional Health Systems find themselves, both for the significant criticalities of the Regions with ordinary statute and for the specific needs of Regions with special statutes and Autonomous Provinces”.

But not only resources, one of the most serious problems is that of personnel “whose shortages have reached an unsustainable and transversal level of criticality in many sectors and health services, with consequent disservices which are, unfortunately, the subject of daily news. This situation, moreover, is destined to worsen in the next few years due to the effect of employees and contracted personnel who will go into retirement, the consistency of which is decidedly higher than that of trained human resources that can be employed. Nonetheless, we are concerned about the dangerous disaffection or “vocation crisis” that the personnel belonging to the National Health Service are experiencing in extremely delicate, but crucial and strategic sectors for the maintenance of the Health Service itself, such as that linked to the emergency. We therefore deem it necessary and undeferrable to rapidly plan an extraordinary and strategic intervention, not of a merely emergency nature, capable of proposing solutions, which can be readily implemented and suitable for immediately addressing the shortage of healthcare personnel and the financial crisis of which, for the past three years the Regional Health Systems pay”.

The reasoning of the Regions is that the mix between “the insufficiency of available resources, the lack of personnel, the continuous rise in the prices of raw materials and energy consumption risk very seriously jeopardizing the implementation of important reforms, starting from that of territorial assistance, as well as the possibility of carrying out the investments of Mission 6 of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, which are in the planning stage and which have already been presented to the Local Authorities. This situation will lead to catastrophic consequences for the Public Health Service which, on the other hand, urgently needs to review the organizational models to strengthen and develop territorial assistance and above all by tackling the serious problem of the shortage of GPs, to renew and make health, hospital and hospital structures more efficient and safer and territorial, provide a solution to the collapse of the emergency structures, modernize the technological and digital park”.

All reasons why the councilors ask the Mef and Salute “with the utmost urgency allowed, for a political meeting in person”.

Luciano Fassari

January 14, 2023
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