Waiting lists, in Veneto there are still 9,320 pre-appointment visits for Gastroenterology, 2,820 services for Orthopedics and 2,800 for physical and rehabilitation medicine. Not to mention the checks of the same specialties. These are official data, published in the latest issue of Bur, the Bulletin of the Veneto Region. This is resolution 608 of last June 4, with which the regional council of Luca Zaia, on the proposal of the Health Councilor Manuela Lanzarin, decided to pay separately the doctors who will be responsible for disposing of all the services that have been waiting for months . In practice, we use “token operators”, in any case to the freelance profession: doctors will be paid 100 euros per hour, 40 euros gross if they are specialists.
Waiting lists, doctors paid 100 euros an hour
It is the same procedure decided last March to clear the backlog of Ophthalmology and Dermatology (at the time there were 20 thousand requests for specialist visits to respond to). The resolution states: “Due to the known shortages of personnel or the need to resort to temporary and more flexible recruitment tools, it is appropriate to resort to the same path also for the additional disciplines of Gastroenterology, Orthopedics and Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine. Therefore, in the absence of valid competition rankings and public notice, the companies and bodies of the regional health service can resort to non-ordinary tools to acquire the resources necessary to guarantee the public service”. And this is because, “with reference to the aforementioned branches, the request for first and second level outpatient services presented a significant increase which could not find an adequate response”. There are a total of 15 thousand visits on the waiting list throughout the Veneto, not counting – and here the Region does not give numbers – the checks. Therefore, in case of extreme evils, extreme remedies. “In order to increase the offer of services in these specialties and allow an adequate response to patients, overcoming the current critical issues of waiting times, it is necessary – says the resolution – to introduce extraordinary and temporary measures, with the specific objective of guarantee the provision of services within a reasonable timeframe”. Hence “the use of self-employment assignments”. Of course, the individual Local Health Authorities must first have ascertained: the objective impossibility of using internal human resources; the absence of valid competition rankings or public notice; or, even in the presence of rankings, the refusal of personnel usefully placed in the rankings themselves. And also having announced, in the absence of rankings, procedures for hiring fixed-term or permanent staff.
The reactions
«There may be co-responsibility between the public and private sectors for the disposal of waiting lists – says Chiara Luisetto, regional councilor of the Democratic Party and member of the Fifth Health Commission – but it risks being a dog chasing its tail, yet another patch on a rift that in words is said to be now resolved but in people’s experience it is not, in a double track where the expectations continue and the staff is missing. The investment must be made in public personnel first and foremost and co-responsibility cannot continue to benefit a private individual who, even with this system of “token operators”, is creating enormous disparities in public structures. There is co-responsibility if burdens and honors are shared, otherwise it is just inequality.” The Italian Fabrizio Boron, also a member of the Health Commission of which he was president in the previous legislature, adds: «One hundred euros an hour, but those who are dependent take less. With these methods a balance will never be found, thus – as management associations in the sector have also underlined – doctors are encouraged to leave public healthcare and go into the private sector”.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Read the full article at
The Gazzettino
Waiting lists, in Veneto there are still 9,320 pre-appointment visits for Gastroenterology, 2,820 services for Orthopedics and 2,800 for physical and rehabilitation medicine. Not to mention the…
