ANCONA If with telemedicine we try to loosen the grip on hospitals, thus giving the reduced healthcare staff a chance to breathe, at the same time structures are created which will then have to walk on the legs of those same doctors and nurses who are already unable to be found. It seems like a paradox, but it’s reality. For the strengthening of territorial assistance through the creation of community homes and hospitals, territorial operations centers, and with the maintenance of care continuity units, the Region has estimated a need for additional healthcare personnel equal to 2272 units.
The knot
Additional figures including doctors, nurses, OSS and technicians to give substance to the implementation of the number of proximity structures also required by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. And with the chronic shortage of personnel in both the national and regional healthcare systems, the risk of them turning into cathedrals in the desert is just around the corner. Going into detail of what is foreseen in the Plan for the Marche region, with the funding of 70,786,725 euros from the Pnrr channeled into Measure 6 for new infrastructures, 29 community houses, 9 community hospitals and 15 operations centers will be built (or reconverted) territorial (these already completed and ready to become operational from 23 June). The staffing standards of a hub community home include between 7 and 11 nurses, a social worker, from 5 to 8 units of support staff (social, health and administrative). For community hospitals, however, the number of nurses must fluctuate between 7 and 9, between 4 and 6 for social and health workers, 1-2 units of other healthcare personnel with rehabilitation functions and a doctor for at least 4.5 hours per day 6 days a week. The list ends with the 15 Cots, for each of which a nursing coordinator, 3-5 nurses and 1-2 units of support staff will be needed. Community homes and hospitals must be completed and tested by 2026, as set out in the PNRR’s tight road map. Assuming (and not granting) that the task is achieved, solving the problem of the shortage of healthcare personnel in two years is unthinkable.
The shortcomings
With emergency rooms increasingly undermanned and hospital departments constantly looking for nurses and health workers, it is difficult to imagine that an outstretched hand could come from those hospitals that would like to be helped by creating more local care structures. The blanket is very short and considering that the number of human resources required by community homes and hospitals is significant, the question arises spontaneously: with the hospital network already in trouble, where will the doctors and nurses needed to make them operational?
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