BARI – “This was not a majority meeting aimed at discussing in the Council the no-confidence vote proposed by the centre-right: I would like to clarify this misunderstanding that I have seen reported in some agency launches. It was a meeting open to the entire majority, to bring about a turning point on the problems that remain in healthcare management. In particular: improve staff hiring capacity; increase the speed of rotation of managers; ensure that each patient normally cared for by a regional reference center for a chronic or long-term illness, once taken care of, receives all the services and related bookings from the same reference centre, and not letting that patient patient turns to the CUP alone, creating very serious difficulties for him”.
This is what the president of the Puglia Region Michele Emiliano declared at the end of the meeting held in the presidency on Friday.
“We have also been very patient on issues related to pharmaceutical spending – continued President Emiliano – There are local health authorities that have not respected the pharmaceutical spending limit, in many cases objectively it wasn’t even that simple. However, the law we have approved is clear: the general directors of the local health authorities who have breached the pharmaceutical spending limit will lose their office, therefore they will be rotated, without any blame, but evidently as an element of stimulus in the achievement of the objectives that the regional council and the Department have indicated to them.
We also told all the managers of the Health Department that they no longer have to mediate with a very complex system like that of healthcare, they must achieve the objectives assigned.
Perhaps this will bring unpopularity, but citizens’ rights come first.
There is a constitutional obligation to protect people’s health, not to protect positions of power within healthcare.”
The president continued: “This is the direction for the end of the legislature, which takes nothing away from the great results achieved in recent years. When I arrived, I found a health system on its knees: not even screenings worked, a truly devastating situation, we were among the lowest in terms of Essential Levels of Assistance, and we were in a recovery plan, that is, with a very large financial hole. We filled the gap and closed the budget in balance. We are one step away from exiting the operational plan also from a formal point of view, so we will be able to recover our financial autonomy for investments. In the ranking of Essential Levels of Assistance we have recovered many positions: from the last places, we are now at the top of the Italian regions, and the first in the South. An extraordinary result, but we must not be satisfied. This is the meaning of today’s meeting.”
“In this phase – concluded Emiliano – there is no need for a new councilor, we have decided to manage the delegation to healthcare with the entire Regional Council, through a method that allows all the majority political forces to intervene and offer their contributions which the president then conveys through resolutions addressing the Department. There is a need to give the Department of Health the political strength to impose tough choices that will also cause stomach aches, but which are necessary to protect all people.”
