The 2023 Social Balance Sheet of Poliambulance Foundation photographs a business with generally growing numbers, within “a difficult moment for healthcare”but always “in the name of hope”, as said this morning by the president of the Mario Taccolini Foundation during the presentation of the document.
The numbers
The first growth figure is an internal record and concerns the economic value generated by the Foundation: 220.3 million euros, marking a + 5.7% compared to 2022 and represent the “historical maximum” for Poliambulanza, which today has 2,201 employees, of which 22% are doctors, 34% are nurses and midwives and 19% are Oss and auxiliaries. On the medical front, the first to increase were hospitalizations, with 30,739 patients last yearwith an average age of 53.6 years and 16% of people over eighty, an increase of 3% compared to 2022.
Outpatients were instead 459,915for a total of over 2.1 million services. Of the hospitalizations, 5,600 were in General Medicine and Geriatrics, while the patients in Neurology were 785, of which 388 were taken to the Stroke unit for stroke, ischemic or hemorrhagic. Access to the Emergency Room also increased, 89,792 in 2023 (+5% on 2022), a figure that makes Poliambulanza the third emergency room for a single facility in Lombardywith over 2,000 red codes and 19 thousand yellow codes, an average discharge time after triage of five hours and 11% hospitalizations.
The entrance to Poliambulance
As for the operating room, from 2022 they are surgical interventions increased (+5.2%): 20,550 were performed in 2023, for a total of 26,031 hours of work in the hospital’s 26 operating rooms. With its 2,734 newborns last year, of which 19.7% were born by caesarean section (about 3% less than the national average), Poliambulance was ranked as the fifth birth center in Lombardy, while another important figure comes from Vascular Surgery, where among the 912 patients operated on in 2023 there were 252 percutaneous nettle valve replacements, a figure which places the hospital among the top ten in Italy for volume of this type of interventions. There were also numerous operations in prosthetic surgery, 1,180, with 254 assisted in motor rehabilitation.
Then there is the tumor chapter: the inventive carcinomas diagnosed were 3,079 in 2023, 1,880 oncological surgery operations, 774 radiotherapy cycles, 9,926 hospitalizations and MAC cycles of medical oncologists. Of the 393 people from Brescia operated on for malignant colon cancer according to data from the National Agency for Regional Health Services (Agenas), 20% (80 patients) received the operation in the Polyclinic. The collaboration with the Brescia ATS is also defined as “excellent”. in secondary oncological prevention: in the context of screening promoted by the Telehealth Agency, there were 548 and 798, respectively, colonoscopies and 798 polypectomies performed by Digestive Endoscopy and 6,205 mammograms, on women between 50 and 69 years old, conducted for prevention of breast cancer.
As for male tumors, the Urology unit of the Poliambulanza stands out among the Italian “Blue Ribbon” centers for the multi-professional and interdisciplinary approach of the diagnostic and therapeutic pathways for prostate tumors: advanced technologies also come to the rescue, such as the “Da Vinci” robotic system, with which 120 robotic radical prostatectomies were performed in 2023.
Last but not least, the research and training sector. There were 206 students on the nursing degree course in 2023, 137 active trials, 160 observational studies and 271 scientific publications in international journals.
The statements
«Even though we are a private law foundation, what we do is a public health service – said general director Marcellino Valerio, just reconfirmed for the next four years –. The patients outside the region were only 4.2% of the total, over 95% of the hospitalization activity of Poliassociazione was carried out for patients from Lombardy in agreement with the NHS”. A service, he recalled, which however is looming over “the perfect storm” given by the aging population, which “absorbs resources for healthcare spending”, not adequate to deal with the phenomenon.
To deal with some chronic healthcare difficulties, such as the list of attestationsPoliambulanza Foundation he contributed 12.6 million euros of his own services, not reimbursed by the regional health system: «We have a big problem with waiting lists, because we are very attractive – explains Valerio -. This is why we have joined the Single Regional Reservation Center project.”
