The territorial social and health conference, chaired by the president of the Province of Reggio Emilia Giorgio Zanni, approved this morning – with 35 votes in favour, 3 abstentions and no votes against – the 2024 forecast budget of the Reggio Emilia local health authority.
“The 2024 financial year will see a gradual reabsorption of energy expenses, albeit increasingly higher than the previous historical expenditure – we read in a note from the Ctss – There is also an increase in the cost of employed personnel due to the renewal of the management collective bargaining agreement medical and non-medical healthcare and the increase in contractual holiday allowances. It follows that the Local Health Authority-IRCCS of Reggio Emilia presents the 2024 budget estimate in natural deficit, in line with what has already been agreed by the provincial Local Health Authorities with the Region in the periodic monitoring meetings.
The imbalance, equal to 89 million, is motivated not only by the increase in costs (in particular of drugs), but also by the fact that the resources to guarantee the economic-financial balance, which in previous years were already partly allocated by Region to the Health Authorities on a forecast basis, are currently allocated at a central level and will only be distributed later during the 2024 financial year, as also happened last year.
The Company undertakes to adopt all necessary measures, in close collaboration with the CTSS and the Region, in order to bring the 2024 result back into balance, using the regional resources still to be distributed to the provincial Local Health Authorities, continuing to guarantee citizens treatment and the assistance they need.
However, the year 2024 sees the Company particularly committed to implementing extraordinary interventions for the reorganization of specialist assistance, to reduce waiting times; in ensuring the improvement of the new emergency-urgency system, with particular reference to the Emergency Assistance Centers (CAU); in the progressive implementation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) in each district of the province and of Ministerial Decree no. 77/2022 concerning the strengthening of territorial assistance.
The positive opinion expressed today by the CTSS represents an act of great responsibility on the part of all public administrators of Reggio, aimed at safeguarding the continuity of the provision of quality health services to our fellow citizens.
“The loss, which to date has only been estimated, should not cause concern first of all because it is precisely a potential deficit – which is also a sharp decrease compared to the 107 million of last year – given that over 400 million of euros of extraordinary resources for the reward of the National Health Fund, the 2023 pharmaceutical payback and the 225 million euros available from the centralized healthcare management of the Emilia-Romagna Region. In any case, as assured in recent days by councilor Donini himself, the Region with great effort and determination will balance the budget, also through the use of extraordinary funds not yet disbursed by the State.
However, the Ctss and the Local Health Authority of Reggio Emilia – as well as the Region itself – do not intend to take a step back on the path that has always ensured our citizens have a quality healthcare system.
Good healthcare, research, innovative medicines, treating everyone – which is what our communities have always been used to – has its costs. If these costs at a national level have increased in recent years due to the Covid emergency, the energy crisis and inflation, the answer can only be to increase resources so as not to compromise the quality of the entire system throughout the country.
Added to this political request that can no longer be postponed is the great commitment of these months of work for the creation, thanks also to 41 million in PNRR funds, of a new territorial health network made up of 10 new Community Homes, in addition to the 15 already existing, and 4 new Community Hospitals.
We will therefore continue our institutional and political battle so that the Government increases the size of the National Health Fund in an adequate and commensurate manner with inflation and healthcare contract renewals, as all the Italian Regions jointly request. And we renew, once again, our cry of very strong concern for a general situation that is now unsustainable, the result of incorrect planning of medical, nursing and technical personnel and of under-financing of national public health, which risks inevitably impacting the citizens, the quantity and quality of health services, on the work of health professionals in less than optimal working conditions, who find an increasingly worrying response to these inefficiencies in the private sector.
Reggio Emilia, as enshrined in article 32 of our Constitution, wants to continue to treat everyone in an efficient manner, regardless of wealth and personal wealth”.
 deficit drops from 107 to 89 million euros){kind=link}