Ferrara A cut of 89 beds within a year at the expense ofCon hospitala, just barely sweetened by the addition of 20 places in a Community hospital (obtained from Saint Anna subtracting rehabilitation places) and by the “promise” of 40 new units in the area financed with Pnrr. The figure (-89) is printed in the hospital company’s 2023 final budget document and was reported by the union Vials who yesterday published a harsh note then followed by the hospital’s response.
The Fials numbers, verified by “Nuova” and reported by the hospital, speak clearly. Between 2022 and 2023 the Ferrara hospital, which also assists a large part of the province’s users (forced in recent months to wait 2 days in the emergency room before admission), lost in General surgery 16 units, 2 in Vascular surgery5 in Infectious diseases20 in General medicine3 in Orl5 in Urology3 in Intensive care9 in Rehabilitation (St. George), 12 in Pneumology15 in Neurorehabilitation (St. George) and 6 in Semi-intensive care (there Thoracic surgeryhowever, it had 7 in 2023 against 0 in the 2022 budget table).
«Last year’s cut – writes Fials – was made entirely in Cona which, on paper, has 633 beds (compared to 722 in the 2022 budget, ed.) divided into 586 ordinary, 19 in day hospital and 28 in day surgery» while theAsladds the union, “declares an unchanged number of beds, 441 at the end of 2023”, between “the hospitals of Argenta, Cento and Delta”.
The beds in the province, continues Fials, in 2011 were 1,612, with an overall loss of 419 units compared to 2023. «An inexorable policy of cuts – comments the union – which has produced and continues to produce so much suffering among elderly or frail citizens, which has emerged like a karst river, in all its gravity, in the emergency rooms, with the sad phenomenon of boarding , staying for hours and hours or days in crowded emergency rooms, transformed into inpatient departments, where in addition to the patients, the healthcare professionals in the trenches pay the price.”
The figure is decidedly sensational, because for years the lack of beds in the area and in hospitals has been underlined and from 2013 onwards Cona’s numbers have in fact continued to revolve around 708-710 units (in 2022, perhaps for a ” tail” of the pandemic, had risen to 722, but the boarding phenomenon had not disappeared).
The hospital company confirms the drastic cut: «The evolution of medicine and the social context makes it necessary to modify the structures of healthcare facilities over the years. This also concerns the number and type of beds.” In practice, the fallback cards would be the «domiciliary and proximity of care, in particular with regards to chronicity» with «hospitals as places of care suited to the treatment of acute cases (patients to be treated in urgency and emergency, ed.) ». The simple number of beds, used as an indicator of the quality of health services, “is misleading and meaningless”, replies the ASL, because “beds used improperly by citizens are not an indication of good service”.
The company points to “the maintenance of hospital beds that are little used or used improperly”. In concrete terms, the hundreds of patients waiting for hospitalization and discharge from Sant’Anna, even for days, seem to indicate exactly the opposite both in hospitals and in local facilities, that is, a structural shortage of beds, inadequate to the demands of a province that is rapidly aging. The reasoning can be further extended to this question: such a complex and invasive operation against the hub hospital of Ferrara and its province could have been carried out without the consent of the Region Emilia Romagna or the management, with the manager at the top Monica Calamaiwhich for the first time in the history of this province has had its budget rejected twice by the socio-health conference (2023 estimate and final balance), did it act in total autonomy?
«The beds have been remodeled in compliance with the legislation (decree 70/2015) in light of the occupancy rate – continues the ASL – The beds Medicine were revised thanks to a comparison with professionals. This reorganization did not have negative effects on boarding, which was concentrated in two particular economic moments linked to seasonal pathologies. More generally, waiting times Emergency room And Emergency Medicine have decreased by 20 percent in the last year.”
The places were reduced «in light of the greater use of outpatient surgery and week surgery», for Rehabilitation, action was taken «in compliance with decree 70 and Regional resolution 2124 of 2005 (19 years have passed since then, during which the Region has never contested the beds at San Giorgio, ed.) which identifies the Cona operational unit as the regional Hub center for serious brain injuries with 25 beds assigned”. The ASL underlines that it has opened 20 positions Community hospital at Sant’Anna (instead of rehabilitation beds, ed.) while “a further 40 beds are planned for the rest of the province with Pnrr funds”.
The agreement of beds with nursing homes (Quisisana for cataracts, for example) is «a flexible way to limit waiting times». Fials recalls the cuts at Delta (2 beds in intensive care and 15 beds in the surgical unit) and in Cento (-10 beds in medicine, medical-cardiological area) and the reduction, remodulation and merging of summer hospitalization units in Cona : in intensive care, in specialist medicine and in pediatrics. L
Gioele Caccia
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