It was July 10, 1964 and the Agostino Gemelli Hospital was inaugurated in Rome, today Agostino Gemelli University Hospital Foundation Irccs. They have passed 60 years and on July 10, 2024 the’Hospital of the Popes‘ – as all Italians know him, since on May 13, 1981, when John Paul II, Pope Wojtyła, was hospitalized at Gemelli after the attack in St. Peter’s Square – celebrated his birthday in grand style. A delegation from the Foundation was received in audience by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella. A white coat, the one for the management of the Complex Operations Unit Italy, is the gift that the Head of State received on behalf of the entire Gemelli community from Antonio Gasbarrini, president of Medicine at the Catholic University.
“It is truly a pleasure to welcome you here in the various articulations of the constellation that characterizes a large Polyclinic with the patient at its center – declared Mattarella – It is not possible in fact to separate the consideration of the patient from that of care, scientific research and teaching. Which is what happens at Gemelli, which we thank for this. Even the numbers underline how Gemelli is a precious point of reference for our country. Numbers that demonstrate not only the contribution offered by Gemelli to the health of our fellow citizens, but also the trust that they place in it. And this is the most effective certification of the quality of the activities carried out. Quality also widely certified by the many awards obtained by Gemelli, both internationally and domestically. But the most effective recognition – added the president – is the trust that it commands among the people and the fact that it represents a point of reference for our fellow citizens. These 60 years, spent in the constant growth of the activity of this Polyclinic, are an opportunity to thank on behalf of the Republic Gemelli for what it does for the health of our country and the Catholic University with the Toniolo Institute for what they do to support it. Thank you again. It is a pleasure to wish you all the best for the next 60 years of ever greater growth”.
The ceremony was attended by Carlo Fratta Pasini, president of the Agostino Gemelli Irccs University Hospital Foundation; Elena Beccalli, rector of the Catholic University, and Marco Elefanti, general director of the Gemelli Polyclinic Foundation. Also present were Paolo Nusiner, general director of the Catholic University; Monsignor Claudio Giuliodori, general ecclesiastical assistant; the dean of Medicine Gasbarrini; Giuseppe Fioroni, vice president of the G. Toniolo Institute of Higher Studies, and for the same institute Enrico Fusi, general secretary, and Michele Lenoci, member of the Board of Directors. Together with them, a representation of doctors, researchers, health workers, administrative employees, patients, volunteer associations, donors, students and specialists.
“What happens every day in our Polyclinic, which Pope Francis has defined as ‘the city of pain and relief’, is a small and tiring miracle“, he has declared Fratta Pasini. A miracle “that continues to repeat itself – he explained – despite the difficulties linked to the recent surge in costs making it increasingly difficult and burdensome. We are forced to ask our collaborators for ever greater dedication and effort, if not real sacrifices, which are accepted each time with a great sense of responsibility. And this is because our professionals have always interpreted the care and concern for patients not so much as a job, but as the very meaning of their existence. Our Policlinico owes everything to them, but unfortunately it can recognize and offer very little – the president of the Foundation remarked – for the economic suffering linked to the DRG rates ‘frozen’ for over 12 years. And this is why the Policlinico Gemelli, born 60 years ago in the midst of the economic boom, today represents a small, daily health miracle”.
“Person, care, dedication, solidarity“. These are the 4 words that the rector Beccalli he chose to summarize “the ideal horizon of the Policlinico Gemelli” in Rome. “On July 10, 1964 – he recalled – the great dream of Father Agostino Gemelli took shape with the inauguration of a Policlinico, an integral part of the Athenaeum of Italian Catholics. The idea of the Policlinico developed thanks to the passionate determination of our founder and his close collaborators at the time, Blessed Armida Barelli and Giancarlo Brasca, convinced that this initiative would have added a further, fundamental, piece to the educational project of the University”, Beccalli emphasized, citing “some of the fathers who inspired our action”. “In the activities of the Policlinico – she underlined – an essential prerequisite is to pay attention to the person in his or her entirety, which is achieved in the presence of a true vocation to care of doctors and health workers. All this must happen, day after day, with the dedication that characterizes those who are at the service of the institutions with a view to contributing to the common good. And, at the same time, in compliance with the virtue of solidarity, one of the cornerstones of the Social Doctrine of the Church, which the Gemelli health personnel are called to inspire in their daily work for their own edification and that of all society. Solidarity protects and defends the life of all, protecting the right to be treated. In this sense, the Gemelli is a true place of solidarity. Mr. President – added the rector, addressing the Head of State – this occasion is therefore symbolically a precious gift from You to the staff of the Policlinico Gemelli and to the entire university community, because it is the confirmation of the close bond between the University of Italian Catholics and the Italian Republic. A bond that we try to strengthen by nurturing that social and civil mission that you yourself indicated as a priority in your speech at the inauguration ceremony of the 2020/2021 academic year”.
It was by will of the Toniolo Institute of Higher Studies and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart that the polyclinic named after Father Agostino Gemelli, founder of the Catholic University, was born. Clinical activities began in May 1964 with the first operational departments, those of Surgical Pathology and Medical Pathology, for a total of 70 beds. In 1977 the first agreement was signed between the Catholic University and the Lazio Region, which recognized the Gemelli as a regional hospital with 1,786 beds and 55 cots. “Today the Gemelli, in close union with the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the Catholic University – the Foundation reports – is one of the largest private non-profit hospitals in Europe and a place where teaching, innovative research, care activities and assistance dialogue daily for the benefit of the community of Rome, regional and national, to make the best and most advanced therapies available to all patients, adults and pediatrics”.
The first 60 years of Gemelli are an opportunity to remember “an extraordinary history of tireless daily service for the protection of health and life”, write the Foundation. Sixty years marked by “numerous, tangible and continuous progress”. Among others, “the transformation of the Policlinico Gemelli into a private non-profit foundation in 2015, which made it legally independent from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, and its subsequent recognition as a scientific hospitalization and treatment institute in 2018”, for the disciplines of Personalized Medicine and Innovative Biotechnology. Milestones that “have further strengthened the identity of the Policlinico Gemelli as a research-oriented ‘acute’ healthcare center. A history that today makes the Gemelli a point of reference for national healthcare, capable of reconciling excellence in the mission of universalistic care guaranteed to all and the not simple economic sustainability, given the contextual conditions”.
From just over 300 hospitalizations per year to almost 100 thousand, 1 in 5 from outside the region. Total: Millions of people treated in 60 years of activity. “Some numbers immediately convey the meaning of this prodigious story”, reports the Foundation. “From 304 hospitalizations from 1964 to 99,564 in 2023. From the 471 children born in 1967, the year the delivery room opened, to the 4,358 born at Gemelli in 2023. Seventy were the beds in the first departments operating in the first year of activity”, while “today there are 1,611 active beds”. In its long journey the polyclinic has established itself as “the largest oncology center in Italy for the number of patients treated (57,751 in 2023). Numerous and prestigious awards obtained worldwide. For the fourth consecutive year, Gemelli has confirmed itself the ‘best hospital in Italy’ saccording to the ranking drawn up by the American magazine ‘Newsweek’, and is ranked 35th in the world and among the top 10 in Europe. Remarkable is the recent confirmation of accreditation by the Joint Commission International (Jci)”, obtained for the first time in June 2021. Results to which the “close collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the Catholic University, with its over 5,500 students and 2,100 specialists, who in the over 60 years since its establishment (November 5, 1961) have made a notable contribution to the training of generations of doctors and health workers. To date, there are 10,838 graduates in Medicine and Surgery, 214 graduates in Medicine and Surgery and over 16,000 graduates in the health professions (4,844 at the Rome site and 11,342 at the associated sites). Today, Gemelli is also one of the most important centers of research national and international. There are 1,199 active clinical research projects, for a value of 22,979,885 euros, in addition to the value of trials co-financed by companies which is 1,965,999 euros”.
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