“The Tuscany Region no more than 15 days ago made it known to local hospital surgeons that, due to a substantial budget deficit in regional healthcare, equal to about 350 million euros, we cannot proceed quickly to recover screening, visits, checks, diagnosis and interventions in the operating room. We got a clear message: instead of guaranteeing 120-130% surgical activity, as we were willing to do in order to recover the waiting lists that have formed in these 20 months of pandemic, we had to reduce it. So thousands of patients, oncology and otherwise, are waiting for our call for surgery. It happens all over Italy, but the leaders of my region, the one where I work, tell us that we have to slow down. But thus the post-Covid recovery becomes a business“. He states it Marco Scatizzi, director of the complex operating unit of General Surgery of the Santa Maria Annunziata and Serristori hospitals in Florence, member of the national council of the Association of Italian hospital surgeons (Acoi) which will bring together the category (5000 members out of a total of 6000 hospital surgeons) on the occasion of the 39th National Congress to be held in Milan from 17 to 20 October.
“In some structures affiliated with our regional health service – again Scatizzi – there have been reductions regarding the financing of overtime for some collateral activities for benign pathologies -. This is not good news. I only hope that the Tuscany Region is simply waiting for 2.2 billion euros, or an additional funding that the body had requested from the central government. To understand if the other regions are in the same conditions as Tuscany, like Acoi we made a census on the whole national territory. Objective: to know the state of the art of oncological surgery, emergency surgery and waiting lists for an operation in the operating room. We will also discuss this on the occasion of the National Congress of Acoi and we hope that even Minister Speranza, invited to participate, will give us some positive answers for us but, above all, for our patients ”.