The terrible picture of the crisis of the national health service made by the Civic Report of Cittadinanzattiva for 2023 in which a hitherto unheard alarm is raised but also an appeal to reverse course.
Very long waiting lists even for visits marked as urgent, desperate emergency rooms, general practitioners absent and an increasing recourse to private spending for those who can, while for others the wait has turned into giving up on health, it is the terrible picture of the NHS crisis made by Civic Report of Cittadinanzattiva for 2023 in which a hitherto unheard alarm is raised but also an appeal to reverse course.
Among the examples of waiting times reported by citizens, according to the report data, three months for an operation for uterine cancer which had to be carried out within a month, two months for an urgent gynecological specialist visit to be fixed within 72 hours. For visits that should take place within 10 days, citizens also waited 60 days for the first cardiological, endocrinological, oncological and pulmonary visit. Without a priority code, you get to wait 360 days. Even for urgent check-ups which should be carried out within 72 people reported appointments no earlier than 60 days from the request.
Data that seems even more disheartening and it is thought that not all Regions have used the fund of 500 million allocated in 2022 for the recovery of the waiting lists that had accumulated due to the pandemic. Data that give a precise meaning to the Istat numbers on health according to which in 2022 far fewer people have undergone specialist visits or diagnostic tests compared to 2019. Compared to the same year, the share of those who declare that they have paid both specialist visits and diagnostic tests entirely at their own expense has increased.
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Alongside the general problems of waiting lists and access to services, citizens report shortcomings in all three areas of health care, ie hospital, local and prevention. In fact, there has been in the last 10 years constant reduction of emergency structures: there is a reduction on the national territory of 61 emergency departments, 103 emergency rooms, 10 pediatric emergency rooms and 35 intensive care centers. The presence of ambulances is also decreasing, given that in some areas it is necessary to wait 30 minutes for an ambulance, compared to a national average of about 20 minutes.
In general, there are six regions (there were three in 2019) that do not reach the sufficiency with respect to the LEA criteria for prevention: in particular in Sicily, the PA of Bolzano and Calabria, which show the lowest data, in addition in 2020 Liguria, Abruzzo , Basilicata. Another urgency is that of the health personnel: data from a new survey of 10,000 professionals show that 40% say they have unsustainable workloads and one in three fails to balance working time with private life.