«Once again family medicine is ignored in the provisions under discussion in support of businesses and professional studios to make up for the costs of expensive energy and inflation: in addition to being “forgotten” in the decrees dedicated to the refreshment of public employees ( for which a one-off indemnity has been provided for 2023 as an advance on the next contract equal to 1.5% of the salary), Family Medicine, once again, has also been excluded from the provisions of the CD. DL Aid quater in favor of businesses»: this is how the harsh communiqué from the Fimmg of Padua begins.
Candlelight tours
Fimmg continues: «The family doctor is to all intents and purposes a contracted freelancer, comparable to a small business; and as such, all the costs of managing his professional studio are his responsibility, including the presence of administrative and nursing staff. It is therefore not clear why these companies are excluded from the measures that provide for concessions since, unlike other professionals who operate with VAT numbers and with management costs at their own expense, the general practitioner cannot adjust the rates of own services at the costs incurred since it is a public service regulated by an agreement – which is still in 2018 – with the National Health Service. For these reasons, the FIMMG of the province of Padua wishes to give a signal to all the political forces, local and national, which are currently discussing the next budget law through a symbolic but significant action: Thursday 15 December the 665 medicine clinics of family of Padua, at dusk and until closing time will not turn on the lights and will welcome patients for the usual candlelit visits. From Rome the candles purchased by the national Fimmg are arriving in all the adhering provinces throughout Italy to join this joint action to raise awareness of politics. A sort of “energy consumption strike” to underline the critical conditions in which the family doctors of Padua work, without resorting to more radical protest systems which, at this moment of peak seasonal flu and the resurgence of the pandemic, would be contracted to the sense of responsibility towards assisted citizens that has always characterized this profession».
Fimmg Padua
«We are at the flickering light – commented the Fimmg national deputy secretary Domenico Maria Crisarà -. We therefore wish to intervene before general medicine shuts down and with it the National Health Service. This wishes to be a symbolic action of the beginning of a protest path for the lack of responses to our increasingly struggling category from the point of view of workloads, bureaucratic commitment and the lack of economic refreshments. It is simply a first sign given that, given the sense of responsibility towards citizens that distinguishes Fimmg, there is a desire to leave open channels of discussion with the regions and the government which at the moment appear feasible. But it is a unitary and common signal to which all our provincial and regional realities adhere”.