Healthcare: Verì, meeting with ASL Teramo on waiting lists and overcrowding in the emergency room

From May 1st more radiological services extending activities until 10pm

(REGFLASH) Pescara, 23 April. Interventions to reduce waiting lists and overcrowding in emergency rooms were the central themes of the operational meeting held between the Health Councilor, Nicoletta Verì, and the Strategic Management of the Teramo Local Health Authority.

During the discussion, it was decided, on the advice of the councillor, that, starting from 1 May, the Teramo Local Health Authority will also increase the production of radiological services by extending activities until 10pm.

“This measure – explained councilor Venì Verì – adds to those already adopted by the Teramo healthcare company. The plans implemented so far, with the economic support of the Region, have, numbers in hand, alleviated citizens’ chronic discomfort regarding access to outpatient and surgical care. However, there still remain critical areas – he added – in relation to which the Teramo Local Health Authority has intended to launch new measures in order to further reduce the waiting times for the use of outpatient services”.

Among the various measures already implemented, the last concerns the “SOS Waiting List” service, a project developed on regional initiative to take charge of priority class prescriptions. Since the activation of the project, the Teramo Local Health Authority has managed over 300 reports, finding positive solutions to 87% of them.

Furthermore, to manage the “drop-out” phenomenon, whereby every day thousands of booking citizens do not show up at the performance event without even canceling, the Teramo Local Health Authority has long structured a Recall service which recovers, every year, thousands of services: between 2021 and 2023 more than 11,000 were recovered. Dynamic overbooking and work lists are measures integrated with the previous one. The first involves an increase in production (outpatient specialist offering), without increased spending on the company budget. In the second project, if the company is not in a position to ensure the booking by the performance date, within the guarantee terms, it inserts the request into a list (floating list or work list). The services recovered through recall/remind and dynamic overbooking are used to satisfy, in chronological order, the requests included in the work list.

“All this – the councilor specified – is part of the plans for the recovery of outstanding services financed by the Region during and post-pandemic”. The Teramo Local Health Authority, in the last two recovery plans, has used over 80% of the resources. In particular, in 2022 it achieved 87.70% implementation and in 2023 98.54%. Another strategic fixed point is the activation within oncology PDTAs of second level services which represent the real taking charge of the patient. The strengthening of instrumental diagnostics and the company’s Alpi, i.e. the purchase by the company of services provided on a freelance basis by its own employed specialists, applying a preferential rate, are the further measures implemented by the Teramo Local Health Authority.

The Teramo Local Health Authority has also launched projects to contain overcrowding in emergency rooms. “First of all – explained councilor Verì – the regional resolution has been implemented in all four hospitals which provides for a series of measures aimed at resolving the critical issues: among the various measures, the permanence of the doctor and nurse beyond the ‘hours of service’. On 16 April, Obs, a short-term specialist observation, was activated, which involves the hospitalization of the patient under observation no longer in the emergency room but in the specialist operating unit. The General Surgery, Medicine, Thoracic Surgery, Orthopaedics, Gynecology and Paediatrics units are involved in this first experimental phase. The medical staff was also increased, 5 new units, in the four emergency rooms.

Furthermore, in June the ASL will launch a second measure: Emergency Medicine will be established in the rooms adjacent to the Mazzini emergency room. The Emergency Medicine department, open 24 hours a day, with 5 beds, will be responsible for the management of acute, unstable or potentially evolving patients who require continuous care and assistance, with dedicated staff. For this reason, hospitalizations can also be short, in any case within 72 hours, waiting for stabilization of the acute pathology and then being referred for hospitalization in a medical or surgical environment, or for possible discharge in case of clinical improvement. Finally, the Teramo Local Health Authority is also starting a pilot project which involves the management of the white and some green codes in the Uccp of Teramo and Villa Rosa with the decisive involvement of general practitioners, for the start of which it is necessary to fulfill the latest bureaucratic steps. (REGFLASH) DURA/240423