Bonaccini and Donini: “An extraordinary plan with concrete measures immediately, in a homogeneous manner across the territory. We also allocate our resources to address the lack of national funds”
By April, each healthcare company will have to prepare an extraordinary production plan for its own territorial area, with short, medium and long-term actions. The aim is to increase monitored visits and diagnostic tests by 20%. The Region’s campaign to defend public health awarded as the best public administration campaign
April 9, 2024 – Thirty million euros to reduce waiting lists throughout the regional territory already starting dal 2024. And to ensure, again this year, a million more performances, increasing the number by 20%. of visits and diagnostic tests monitored by the “Regional plan for governing waiting lists”.
It’s resources put in place by Emilia Romagna region to reduce the currently expected booking and access times specialist clinical visits and tests (the so-called ‘specialist outpatient services’) provided by the public health service.
An investment that gives strength to Extraordinary plan wanted by the Councilconsisting of concrete measures that will be implemented already by the summer from all healthcare companieswith a dual objective: to increase both the number of specialist services availablebe the share of tempo dedicated to outpatient services by of medical staff.
Between main actions planned within the short term, the increase in supply also through the involvement of accredited private structures, schedule press and the introduction of lists for registering requests outstanding, with disposal in chronological order, to relieve the citizen of the burden of re-contacting the booking services.
The objective is to accompany the regional public health system towards a new paradigm of implementation ofSpecialist outpatient care, and at the same time allow citizens to benefit, in a manner uniform and homogeneous throughout the regionOf a greater range of performance in advance. As is happening for the reorganization of the emergency-urgency networkwhich is proceeding with very positive results, even in terms of specialist outpatient services, the commitment is on the one hand to continue to guarantee citizens an adequate level of offer and proximity of serviceson the other, accompany them towards one appropriate use.
In defense of public and universal healthcare which, for Emilia-Romagna, remains the only possible healthcare model, to be supported and strengthened, because it is seriously put at risk due to the insufficiency of resources allocated at a national level and the lack of personnel. A concept reiterated by communication and awareness campaign desired by the Region – “Long live public health” -, that next Thursday in Milan the Una prize, the Association of communication companies, will be awarded as the best campaign in the communication category for public administration.
To illustrate the details of the provision, today in the Region in Bologna Press conferencePresident, Stefano Bonacciniand the councilor for health policies, Raffaele Donini.
“Despite the critical issues that public health is experiencing due to lack of national funding and lack of personnel, the Emilia-Romagna Region does not take a step back on the right to health, to continue to guarantee citizens a public and universal service that is seriously compromised at risk – they say Bonaccini and Donini-. Throughout the country, waiting lists have grown, and even our region, where the consumption of specialist outpatient care services is among the highest in Italy, has to deal with this reality. With this new path, which we finance by once again using regional resources, starting this year we will increase the available services by 1 million, simplify bookings and increase the presence of specialist doctors throughout the territory”.
“This is a commitment that we have been carrying out for some time – they add Bonaccini and Donini-. We have done this with the reorganization of local primary care and the emergency-urgency system, which is giving important results, with the regional plans for the recovery of post-pandemic waiting lists, in the outpatient, hospitalization and surgical settings, which have allowed to return to pre-Covid levels of service provision. And we do it now, by strengthening specialist outpatient care, focusing on short, medium and long-term measures and measures, uniform across the territory, and through dialogue and discussion with healthcare companies and trade unions, as we have done for the emergency-urgency reform”.
The commitment of the Region on this front it has never failed, with a series of extraordinary interventions started in 2015. A multi-year strategy that has allowed significant results to be achieved in reducing waiting times and recovering services not provided in the Covid period: in 2023 the volume of performance has exceeded quota 16 millionalmost returning to 2019 levels, when they were around 16.9 million.
Actions planned in the short term
The new plan for reducing waiting lists increases the offer of services, in particular specialist visits, also through the involvement of accredited private facilities, on the one hand to allow the system to absorb the greatest number of requests not yet processed and to bring expectations back to a situation of greater balanceand on the other to offer citizens assistance and care services appropriateor commensurate with one’s needs, from a prescriptive, organizational and delivery point of view.
There are three the types of intervention planned already for the short term: make the possibility of booking services always effective, guaranteeing the conditions for having them diaries always open and with an availability horizon of at least 24 months; help users relieving them from the burden of having to contact the booking services again if there is no availability, but introducing in these cases the list for registering requests in a progressive list in chronological order e guarantee waiting times from the priority classes indicated in the recipe.
Already by AprilFurthermore, each Local Health Authority, in collaboration with the University Hospital or any relevant IRCCS, will have to submit and Extraordinary plan of production for its own territorial scopeto guarantee, immediately and throughout 2024, a significant performance increase. Companies will also have to further improve production and organizational efficiency increasing the presence and operation of specialists in the outpatient setting and in local structures, primarily the Community Houses.
Medium-long term actions
In addition to the more immediate actions, the Plan envisages, in the medium and long term, the use of new technologies to streamline the processes for booking healthcare services. On the one hand through tools that simplify the relationship with the citizen, also through the use of “intelligent” booking systems that are as automated as possible, which, starting from the prescriptions, allow research on the available diaries by providing the first appointment, therefore without the need of interventions by operators.
On the other hand, an organization of the supply network that prepares, for low complexity and high prevalence services, provision in Community Houses at district or area level (also through the activation of pathways for taking charge of chronic or elderly multi-pathological patients), and for more complex and low prevalence conditions, provision in Hub locations.
Furthermore, the actions envisaged include the improvement of production efficiency and the full use of the outpatient spaces and technological equipment available; the implementation of clinical comparison tools between general practitioners and specialists, for example with teleconsultation; and again, the reorganization of access to outpatient surgery and related platforms.
The Region’s commitment to reducing waiting lists
Since 2015, the Region has implemented strategies for the containment and efficient planning of waiting lists, with particular reference to specialist outpatient services and scheduled surgical hospitalizations (dgr 1056/2015 and dgr 272/2017). In 2019, the “Regional plan for governing waiting lists for the three-year period 2019-2021” was adopted, and the Regional Observatory on waiting lists for outpatient and inpatient specialist services was established; in 2022 the “Regional operational plan for the recovery of surgical, outpatient and oncological screening waiting lists” was prepared.
With the new “Regional strategies for the governance of access to outpatient specialist services and the containment of waiting lists”, the Region introduces a 360-degree structural plan, which intervenes on supply and demand, encouraging professional comparison between general practitioners and specialists, involving the affiliated private facilities and simplifying the care of the person.