Healthcare Abruzzo, the recovery process begins. The first point on the agenda of the 11 June session of the Health Commission, the fifth of the Regional Council, includes the hearing of the general directors of the Avezzano – Sulmona – L’Aquila and Teramo local health authorities.
The managers of the other two will be heard in the next session, “given that the agenda was already particularly large”, says the president of the Commission, Paolo Gatti (Brothers of Italy), in the capital.
The call arises from a request from the League councilor Carla Mannettifollowing the approval of the regional law of May 23rd which, in addition to providing a 68 million maneuver to cover the Abruzzo healthcare deficit, gave thirty days to the four healthcare companies to transmit rationalization plans. An amendment signed by Gatti was approved in article 2 which establishes that the aforementioned plans “must be promptly transmitted to Commissions I and V of the Regional Council and the Health Department provides for their approval after having illustrated the contents and sustainability to the aforementioned Commissions which will express the relevant mandatory and binding opinions”. Adjectives that were at the center of a disagreement between Gatti and the councilor Nicoletta Verì, who would have preferred the commissions to intervene only on a consultative basis. But Gatti did not give in.
The fact that the general directors of the local health authorities are audited before the preparation of the monitoring plans is not formally required by law: but it introduces, in fact, closer supervision by the Council on the management of healthcare, also hoped for by the president of the Assize Lorenzo Sospiri and the which the opposition also gave a substantial green light. The Gatti amendment was in fact shared.
“The convocation, requested by my colleague Mannetti, is not linked to the law in question, but I imagine that she or the other councilors will want to ask for an update of the measures”, says the president of the Health Commission in the capital. In fact, it is difficult to think that the plans are not in progress, given that about half of the thirty days available to the local health authorities to transmit the plans to the Council’s Health Department have already passed.
Healthcare Abruzzo, tight deadlines
The timescales are therefore very tight, even if the president himself hypothesizes a first step to be concluded with the finalization of drafts which will then have to be refined if necessary, also with the assistance of the two Commissions: “In any case, in this matter a role the Health Department plays the central role. We are politics, we carry out a guidance and monitoring function. The narrow interval also serves to make it clear that there is a need to delve deeper and intervene quickly. Today it is decidedly premature to express optimism or pessimism about the outcome of this process. We still need to understand, for example, the performance of the first half of the year, because the accounts were updated last December. I would be surprised if it improved.”
The situations, the liabilities, are quite different from each other: if the healthcare companies of Avezzano – Sulmona – L’Aquila and Lanciano – Vasto – Chieti are in the red by 46 and 42 million respectively, that of Pescara is at minus 26. The loss of the Teramo local health authority is under eight million. A discrepancy raised by Gatti himself during the session of the Regional Council, in light of which, he says today, “equal treatment for such different situations would seem strange to me”.
