The dramatic condition of the emergency rooms is “the litmus test of the profound crisis that our country’s hospitals are going through. The places of ordinary hospitalization and intensive care are insufficient, not even the specialist staff reaches acceptable levels, especially in certain areas such as emergency medicine, intensive care, anesthesia and resuscitation, but also in other medical and surgical areas. The situation of the emergency room with hundreds of citizens awaiting hospitalization, therefore, “is nothing more than the consequence of decades of underfunding and lack of hospital planning “, denounces the Forum of Scientific Societies of Italian Hospital and University Clinicians (Fossc), which brings together doctors from different disciplines who treat patients in hospitals every day.
“The emergency room problem is the tip of the iceberg of a hospital system that is in trouble – say the 30 scientific societies gathered in the Forum – it is the result of years of cuts to the NHS: in 20 years 300 hospitals have been closed with 80 thousand fewer beds and from 2007 to today it has lost 50,000 staff. The PNRR allocates only very few and insufficient resources to hospitals. This crisis, which we have been denouncing for months, is destined to worsen, both for citizens who turn to hospitals for emergency situations, but also for all patients suffering from chronic diseases, altogether several million citizens “.
In particular, the “perplexity” of the specialists “about ‘community hospitals’ as the only form of intervention on the structures of the national health system is firm. obsolete and inadequate to cope with the many and different complexities posed by the health questions of modern medicine. As soon as the Pnrr was published, we immediately understood the inadequacy of the measures envisaged in Mission 6 and we organized ourselves with a platform that we presented to Minister Speranza, putting forward proposals for a modification of Ministerial Decree 70. The facts that now concern the emergency room unfortunately give reason to our previous concerns, which have been formalized by the Minister for months “.
“The role of hospitals must be rethought – the scientific societies underline – within a new model of care in a health system that is more effective, sustainable and useful for the citizen. And not starting from documents, already published in the press, which have been rejected. by scientific societies and by the Minister of Health himself, because they are even worse than the already serious situation determined by the ministerial decree on hospital standards (Ministerial Decree 70 of 2 April 2015), a provision that must instead be thoroughly revised “.
Healthcare workers – recalls the Fourm, coordinated by Francesco Cognetti, president Foce Confederation of oncologists, cardiologists and hematologists – are inadequate in relation to the population of our country: hospital specialists are about 130 thousand, 60 thousand fewer than Germany and 43 thousand fewer. of France. The total number of ordinary beds is much lower than the European average (314 compared to 500 per 100 thousand inhabitants) and places Italy in 22nd place among all the countries of the Old Continent. Even for the beds in intensive care Italy does not shine: if in the pre-Covid era there were 8.6 places per 100 thousand inhabitants, with the health emergency it was expected that they would be increased up to 14 but, in reality, only a small part is actually activated and, in any case, with numbers not even comparable to, for example, Germany (33 beds per 100 thousand inhabitants).
“These data – the scientific societies remark in conclusion – are the demonstration that DM 70 is wrong, that it is wrong especially after 165,000 deaths, which represent the highest mortality among Western European countries, ignore the problems of the hospital system, that the contrast between hospital and territory is wrong, that it is wrong to re-propose the old logic of de-hospitalization, that it is wrong to devalue the role of the most important hospital for acute care, which is only the hospital. We urgently ask the minister to reconvene the discussion table started to seek together, and with the sense of responsibility that distinguishes us, the necessary solutions “.
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