Council of Ministers convened for today, Tuesday 4 June 2024, at 11.30 am at Palazzo Chigi. On the agenda, public health and the decree law on ‘urgent measures to reduce waiting list times for healthcare services‘.
The government’s strategy to attack the plague of public waiting lists will therefore be divided into two measures: A ‘light’ law decree was immediately issued in the CDM which essentially does not need resources, then a more ‘reasoned’ bill which should include those measures that require resources, Adnkronos Salute learns after the meeting held yesterday between the Regions and the Ministry of Health. Meeting “with some mutual embarrassment”, it transpired from the meeting, because the Regions complained that they had only seen the drafts of the Legislative Decree in the newspapers.
What is in the decree and what in the bill
The decree contains some impact and reorganization measures that do not require substantial resources, visits and exams on weekends, for example. But also the performance monitoring platform that will be managed by Agenas, to understand the weight of supply and demand for services; the interoperability of regional systems and then an inspection structure created ‘ad hoc’; the implementation of regional Cups with accredited private individuals and the purchase of intramural performance packages. Within the decree, access to telemedicine should also be guaranteed to family doctors and paediatricians. The contribution of the ‘service pharmacies’, present in the drafts of the Legislative Decree, currently seems “more nuanced”.
The bill, which will take longer and have ‘reasoned’ methods of comparison, because many resources are needed, should instead include the raising of the spending ceiling for the private sector and additional resources for staff.
Schillaci: “Some measures are immediately operational”
“Some measures will be operational immediately after the Council of Ministers. I am thinking of the increase in the spending ceiling for the hiring of healthcare personnel, which will go from 10% to 15%. I really hope others can be implemented with the start of the new year , from 1 January 2025 we would like to abolish the spending cap on hiring: this truly represents an epochal fact after 20 years of its existence”, underlined the Minister of Health, Orazio Schilaci, guest last night on ‘Five minutes’, the Bruno Vespa, talking about the measurements.
To be able to guarantee visits and tests in the right time “we are working. We want that if a citizen has to have an exam, a CT scan, for example, within 72 hours, he will do it. And this is due to the great sensitivity of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on This issue is still ongoing today to try to make “the measure” operational as soon as possible. It would be truly epochal – he remarked – to finally ensure that when a citizen needs to perform a service, it is paid for by the Service. national health system”.
From now on, Schillaci confirmed, “there will finally be a single booking agenda, which will bring together all the services available in the public and private sectors. This is not yet the case in most regions”.
“It will be reiterated that it is not possible for a doctor, for a health facility – continued the minister – to carry out a greater number of services intramurally than those carried out in the public, because this affects the waiting lists. And it is not possible”. And again, “we will immediately implement a monitoring system, a platform to know region by region which performances are lacking in order to be able to intervene promptly”.
Among the measures, “a reduction in the tax on overtime is foreseen for all healthcare workers who carry out overtime work. This is fundamental and I believe that healthcare workers will respond favorably, in addition to being people of great quality” .
“There are – the minister then announced – 80 million for measures related to mental health. It is an important problem, which has exploded especially in the younger segments of the population after Covid and the Government has always paid great attention to this and this provision demonstrates in a concrete way.”
Council of Ministers, the agenda
This is the agenda in the Council of Ministers: decree law on ‘urgent measures to reduce waiting lists for healthcare services’ (Presidency – Health); draft law on ‘guarantee measures on health services’ (Health)”. And also: draft law on ‘amendments to the discipline of the honorary judiciary of the exhaustion quota’ (Justice); draft law on ‘measures for regulatory simplification and the improvement of the quality of regulation and delegations to the Government for the simplification, reorganization and reorganization in certain subjects’, definitive examination (Institutional reforms and regulatory simplification).
