Stefano Rizzi 07:00 Friday 26 April 2024
Neither the centre-left nor the centre-right have carried out the fundamental task of the Region: planning. We have been sailing by sight for too long, chasing problems and badly spending huge resources (9 billion). Now there are no more alibis
Nine billion to make Piedmont’s healthcare system work. Few? Insufficient? Probably yes, if we consider the almost imperceptible increase in resources that the distribution of the health fund has allocated to Piedmontcompared to the previous year and the one before that, without forgetting the funds promised by the then minister of health Roberto Speranza to partially cover the enormous emergency expenses Covid and never arrived. But if this is what the convent, understood as government, goes through, a no less important problem for the impact on services to citizens is the way in which the resources, already not abundant, are spent. And to make the best use of the resources, what has been the main function assigned to the Regions since their institution back in 1970, namely planning, must be translated into practice.
A task that, year after year, decade after decade, local authorities have neglected, extended to something else and often strayed in a bizarre and incomprehensible way into issues that are detached from their role. With the inevitable result of finding ourselves sailing by sight in a stormy sea, as healthcare has been the case today, continuing to plug leaks without having a mapped out route. Metaphor aside, that route is called a socio-health plan and it is, or rather should be, the main tool for governing healthcare, after having planned it in every aspect without leaving uncertainties and gray areas where the system’s articulations in the territory often act too autonomously or, even worse, they don’t act at all.
Piedmont has needed a new, updated and effective social and health plan for ten years now and no one, of any political persuasion, can absolve themselves from a responsibility which, today more than ever, weighs on the efficiency of the system and consequently on the patients. The cannot fail to bear responsibility for this delay PD and the entire center-left who did not even sketch the start of a legislative process in this sense during the five-year term of the council presided over by Sergio Chiamparino. The return plan first and the longed-for exit from it afterwards do not appear to be sufficient elements to justify a stalemate of the then majority in the Regional Council regarding the programming instrument. Replaced and perhaps even overridden by the council’s infamous resolution 1/600 which had a very heavy impact on the hospital network and, in particular, on the reduction of beds whose effects are still being felt. A forcing, motivated by the aforementioned recovery plan, compared to a socio-health plan which was profoundly modified by it, without even prior discussion in the chamber.
The same chamber that, having changed the majority, has given no hint of planning over the last five years. As and more than the commissionership was for the Chiamparino council, the Covid it certainly weighed on the legislature he brought Alberto Cirio and the center-right to govern the Region. If it would have been objectively unthinkable to face the planning tool together with the emergency (which also highlighted its inadequacy), it is difficult to understand why, after the darkest period and precisely on the basis of the dramatic experience, they did not, at least, the basis of the legislative process.
Healthcare construction, as well as the structures envisaged by the forced stage path towards the implementation of the Pnrr, or even the personnel issue, have been and still are necessarily addressed by adjusting day by day a route that is not traced and if it and no longer corresponds to current and future needs. The waiting lists, an absolutely more serious problem and an absolute priority, are confirmation of how important the absence of planning is and how necessary it is at every level. The management of the freelance profession under the intramoenia regime appears to be less and less compliant with the provisions of the law, with hospital doctors authorized by the local health authorities to practice in multiple private external structures and with the rule that provides for reimbursement in the event of bookings that go beyond the limit set by the prescription which is almost always ignored and not communicated to patients. This, as well as the failure to comply with the suspension of the intramoenia itself in the event that the waiting lists reach unacceptable levels, has also been achieved because a clear route has been replaced by visual navigation. Not to mention the token operators who, while it is true, represent a problem for the whole country, but are also illegitimate and very expensive children of a lack of planning.
Yesterday the news of the assistance provided, with the sending of some gastroenterologists, by theASL City of Turin to that of Biella which was no longer able, due to lack of staff, to provide colonoscopies. But in the face of an ASL, such as the one directed by Carlo Piccowhich responds to the appeal of the regional health directorate, other companies with even more doctors, including professors, turn a deaf ear.
A series of emergencies that must be faced and possibly resolved as quickly as possible further confirm the need to change the system just as quickly with a Region that can once again fulfill the planning role. The same highly critical healthcare situations cannot become a further alibi or justification, but rather a reason for the legislature that will vote on June 9th to place the social and healthcare plan as an absolute priority. All the more so given the forecasts of the reduction of the health fund for the years to come, Piedmont cannot wait any longer for the tool to make the best use of resources, avoiding plugging leaks by navigating by sight.
