“The void of public intervention covered with increasing use of private healthcare”

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«It has already happened in recent months that in their visits to Piacenza, exponents of the regional administration and the national government announced important interventions on health, hospitals and territorial medicine. Even in his recent visit to Borgonovo, the President of the Region gave reassurances on the health house of the Tidone valley, which is currently struggling to guarantee group medicine due to the lack (due to retirement) of some general practitioners (Medici di Medicina general).
In reality, the problem of the shortage of GPs also involves other realities in the province, especially the peripheral areas: Alta Val D’Arda, Alta Val Tidone, etc. The director of Ausl (says Bonaccini) reassures that the problem will be solved (in Borgonovo) even if it will be necessary to arrive at exceptional decisions. What these solutions are is not stated. One could be the provision of important economic incentives to persuade other GP doctors, if available, to replace boarders, the other (the most reasonable) could be to decide (finally) to equip health homes with doctors dependent on Ausl. In this way, the question of the right to a territorial medicine that does not depend on the free choice of doctors but on precise investment choices by the Ausl would be resolved to provide the health houses with stable and continuous services throughout the territory and not only where there are GPs available voluntarily. However, the impression of a lack of vision remains strong. In addition to that of Borgonovo we have other health houses on which it would be good to have answers, such as:

In Lugagnano the construction of the health house for the upper Val d’Arda is financed but Ausl does not yet know what it will put into it. It will then be decided.

In Bobbio, as in other areas of the province, the Casa della Salute (on which important investments have been promised) is still unknown, after years, if and when it will be built and for what purpose.

In Monticelli the health house is undergoing an important weakening of personnel and of assistance and diagnostics response.

No less problematic is the situation of the hospital response which, due to a social and health reorganization plan (the one approved in 2017 and never checked to evaluate a possible update), sends everything back to the new Piacenza hospital (which will be ready no one knows when … 8-10 years?) While in the meantime the Fiorenzuola hospital is converted to the rehabilitation response, Castel San Giovanni is downsized, and Bobbio is kept in the condition of Osco. All with serious consequences on waiting lists, diagnostics and treatment. A void of public intervention covered with increasing use of private healthcare as evidenced by the facts and recent decisions of the Ausl management.
The hiring expenditure ceiling weighs on everything (whose organic plant is still subject to legal limits) which does not allow the creation of a real network of territorial medicine (as was foreseen by the 2016 regional plan) and leaves in suffering also the current hospital of Piacenza.

In his speech in Borgonovo, President Bonaccini offered us yet another reassurance that “everything will be fine”,
But there is only one way (which is not usually “day by day let’s see what happens”) to change direction. That of opening a real confrontation on the provincial social and health level (now 5 years old), reviewing the objectives and adapting the investment plan starting from the needs expressed by the territory and not starting from the choices of rationalization and reorganization of the Ausl company “.

Provincial coordination of the committees on health and territorial medicine