After months of silence and delays, something is moving for the new hospital in Andria as it emerged yesterday in the Libra regional commission. The contract for the work could start by the end of September, as reported in the session by the general director of the Bat ASL, Tiziana Di Matteo, who informed that the clinical management plan has been revised, following the need to make changes that would result in cost containment. As you will remember, the initial 106 million euro project rose to 268 million euros, over 150% due to the price increases and the pharaonic planning. After that the hitch concerned the clinical management plan.
Di Matteo confirmed that Andria will have the second level hospital, but with a series of cuts to contain expenses. Starting from the operating rooms which will decrease from the initial 18 to 12, as well as the delivery rooms which will be five instead of six, while the number of mammography machines will be increased. The new clinical management plan will now be transmitted to the designers to proceed quickly with the technical documents which will in turn be subject to checks by the regional Asset agency to make up for the time lost in recent months. Based on the timetable, the new design contract will be signed in ten days, after which Asset will complete the technical checks on 75% of the work by August and on 25% in the following two weeks.
For the hospital in the North of Bari, however, we are awaiting the opinion of the Health Department on the clinical management plan which, as emerged from listening to the general directors of the Bat and Bari local health authorities, was sent on 15 April. Yesterday a meeting was also scheduled with the local health authorities themselves and the technicians of the regional health department to arrive at a solution, considering that the tender to obtain the state funds linked to the program agreement must be awarded in January 2026.
However, the result for the new Maglie-Melpignano hospital is nothing. The construction of the structure is on the high seas, as the general director of the Lecce Local Health Authority announced in a written note, indicating that there is nothing new in the bureaucratic process. This explains the understandable concern of the president of the Regional Budget Commission, Fabiano Amati, who requested responses from the Salento Local Health Authority, pointing out the concrete risk that, in the next few years, the province of Lecce will be left with only one large second level hospital, that is the “Vito Fazzi” of Lecce.
