Healthcare, goodbye to waiting lists: here’s the news
Health Minister Schillaci: "We are facing one of the problems most complained about by citizens with respect to the healthcare system"
ROME – The Council of Ministers has given the green light to the decree law and the bill for the elimination of waiting lists in healthcare facilities. “These measures are the result of work that saw us interact with the Regions, with professional orders and with citizens’ associations. I believe we are facing one of the problems most complained about by citizens with respect to the healthcare system, which are the waiting lists. It’s a question of resources, but as we’ve always said, also of organization“. Thus the Minister of Health, Orazio Schillaci, illustrating the government’s measures against waiting lists in a press conference, at the end of the Council of Ministers.
WAITING LISTS, HERE’S THE NEWS
“If the citizen does not receive the healthcare service within 72 hours, if it is urgent, he can contact the intramoenia or accredited private individual. However, everything will be paid for by the National Health Service“, explained the minister in conference, which took place at Palazzo Chigi. This means that “citizens will finally be able to have the services they need in the right time and paid for by the NHS”. Furthermore, the spending cap will also be abolished. “It has existed for 20 years and no one has ever canceled it. For 2024 – added the minister – the spending ceiling for healthcare personnel will go from 10 to 15% for the regions that request it, /strong>while from 1 January 2025 it will be abolished“. This is fundamental in the meantime to increase the number of health workers, but above all to put new and young forces into the national health system“. The minister was therefore keen to underline that it is a result obtained “with the entire government and I especially thank the prime minister for the great sensitivity he has shown on this issue”.
For Schillaci “it is no longer acceptable that in many situations there are closed lists, they must always remain open. Individual hospital companies or individual professionals must no longer perform a higher number of services intramurally to those carried out by the national health system”. The minister then underlined that “from some sample surveys, it tragically appears that there are health facilities in which perhaps 9 electrocardiograms are performed under NHS care and 90 intramurally. This is no longer acceptable “.