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Waiting lists, delays mainly affect the elderly

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Waiting lists, delays mainly affect the elderly

The emergency of the pandemic has brought to alarming levels the problem of waiting lists, on which, even before, the chronic lack of personnel with which to meet the health needs of citizens weighed. The numbers give the colossal dimension of the phenomenon: compared to 2019 in 2020 we had 64,504,000 fewer outpatient specialist services (-28.3%) and in 2021 they were 33,919,000 fewer (-14, 9%), for a total of 98,423,000 fewer outpatient specialist services in the two-year period; hospital admissions were 1,774,817 fewer in 2020 than in 2019 (-21%). The complaint is made by Senior Italia FederAnziani because these delays are especially for the over 60s.

The problem is also confirmed by the results of a survey conducted by ISTAT which assessed the number of waivers by citizens of specialist visits and diagnostic tests due to the difficulty of accessing the service or economic reasons, highlighting that the waivers were 4,845. 000 in 2021 and as many as 5,610,000 in 2021 (in 2019 they were 3,162,000), with an evident increasing trend. “Even if the Regions, also following the reminders of Senior Italia FederAnziani, have begun to roll up their sleeves, the interventions made so far have not been sufficient and in terms of recovering the waiting lists, an important effort is still needed to relaunch the local health ā€, writes the association.

For many months, Covid has effectively canceled the other chronic conditions, taking away space for those who, for example, have heart problems or have to undergo cataract surgery. There are millions of patients who still struggle to obtain compliance with the times indicated by the doctor on the prescriptions, finding themselves having to postpone specialist visits, checks, interventions. “It is important not to let our guard down on the fight against Covid, but at the same time we must return to take charge of other chronic conditions because citizens continue to suffer the enormous damage to health from diseases diagnosed late and therefore more difficult to treat”, underlines Senior Italia FederAnziani.

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The case of ophthalmology

The health emergency caused by Covid-19 has led to significant delays in activities related to ophthalmological diseases: in this period, 2,500,000 fewer outpatient services have been carried out nationwide and this has determined the lengthening of waiting lists and inconvenience for users. There has been a contraction of more than 300,000 cataract surgeries, which in pre-Covid times reached 600,000 in a year; a part of the over 80, who have not been operated on, suffered a fracture of the femur due to low vision and the consequent difficulty in avoiding obstacles; there was a reduction in endovitreal injections (IVT) for the treatment of exudative maculopathy, which, at times, made it impossible to recover functional vision.

The role of the family doctor

There are many ways in which we can intervene. “It is necessary, for example, to improve patient care processes, in particular the elderly and chronic patients through the involvement of general practitioners scattered throughout the territory”, writes Senior Italia FederAnziani. “In fact, it is unthinkable to bring back to local healthcare functions that currently improperly overload hospital structures without full involvement of family doctors, and some limitations on the faculty of prescribing drugs for certain pathologies by general practitioners should be overcome, avoiding many specialist visits prescribed only for the renewal of the therapeutic plan. We need to strengthen the outpatient specialist: if we have reached this point it is because for years the territory has been abandoned and desertified, leaving the doctors to retire without being replaced “.

In fact, one of the problems of waiting lists is the lack of strengthening of the outpatient specialist, or that sector of medicine that operates in the territory, even outside hospitals, and which has its own patients in the elderly and chronic patients. It is therefore now urgent to increase the supply of specialist doctors who exist and who are underutilized compared to concrete needs. “And above all, it is necessary that the Regions definitively take charge of this serious problem of our Health System in order to give back once and for all to citizens, especially the elderly, chronic and frail, the right to have the best treatment opportunities”, concludes Senior Italy FederAnziani.

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