Pescara, patient in the emergency room waits three days for an anti-decubitus mattress

He managed to get an anti-decubitus mattress after two days in the emergency room and only after the intervention of the police. The one who requested the intervention of the military was Claudio Ferrante, president of the “Crozzine determinate” association and head of the disability policy office of the CGIL of Pescara. The protagonist of the story is a quadriplegic patient who went to the emergency room of the Pescara hospital on May 17 due to respiratory failure. The patient, says Ferrante, was taken care of by the emergency room, but it was immediately necessary to be transferred to pulmonology. «As often happens, there was no place and treatment was provided on site, but the emergency room does not have an anti-decubitus mattress, which is essential for patients with spinal cord injuries. Due to this lack, a noticeable redness of the skin has formed, such as to foreshadow the possible onset of bedsores. On Sunday 19 May I was forced to call the police who found that the mattress for which the emergency room had requested was missing.” The mattress only arrived yesterday morning. «With my wheelchair – continued Ferrante – I entered the emergency room and saw patients in the corridors probably waiting for hospitalization; they had to move the stretchers to get through. On that occasion I discovered that there were patients waiting for hospitalization since May 7th.”

The general secretary of the CGIL of Pescara, Luca Ondifero, also commented on the story: «A healthcare facility that does not have immediate availability of an anti-decubitus mattress is the concrete representation of a healthcare system that does not adequately take care of patients» said the union representative, who requests an urgent meeting with the ASL management. Clarifications on the case arrived precisely from the top management of the ASL: «The anti-decubitus mattress was requested promptly on Saturday 18 May and arrived on the first working day following the request, Monday 20. In the meantime, specific instructions were given to guarantee the well-being of the patient during the stay in the emergency room (frequent movement of the patient is prescribed, every two hours, in order to avoid the onset of pressure sores). A timely activity was therefore carried out in response to the patient’s needs. As for waiting times, they explain to the local health authority, «from 1 January to 10 May there were 1,800 more visits to the Pescara emergency room compared to the same period last year (from approximately 24,500 to approximately 25,865), given that places the department among the first in Italy in terms of number of accesses and gives the measure of the daily commitment of the operators involved”.

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