Servadio (OFI Lazio): “Physiotherapy is a driving component of rehabilitation”
Successful participation for the first Regional Congress of the Order of Physiotherapists of Lazio
The proceedings were opened by the President of the Lazio Regional Council, Antonello Aurigemma. ‘After meeting last September, on the occasion of World Physiotherapy Day, for the conference held in Pisana – he reminded those present – today I am very proud to participate in the first regional conference of the order of physiotherapists of Lazio. It is important to have an overall vision, and this is possible through discussion and listening to those who work in healthcare every day. Your role has strategic relevance both in terms of prevention and to strengthen treatments. Among other things, with the increasing age of the population, your activities are even more valuable and necessary. Therefore, these opportunities are also useful to delve deeper into some aspects, such as the importance of technological innovation. As a regional administration, our role is to accompany and support your activities in this growth path. Therefore, we will guarantee maximum availability also in the future for new initiatives, in order to carry out a synergistic collaboration.
To speak then it was the President of the National Federation of Physiotherapists Orders (FNOFI), Piero Ferrante. ‘It’s not easy – he was keen to point out – but ours is a long job. We are in the area, we are at the service of citizens, we are ready to respond to the new health needs that citizens have the right to see fulfilled. A few years have given us a completely different panorama: from a demographic point of view, because we have over 14 million over 65s, and from an epidemiological point of view, with chronicity and multimorbidity. And, probably, we need to review some of our paradigms. Today is a day in which Lazio demonstrates that physiotherapists have ideas, know how to implement them and are always at the service of the citizen. We are an Order born from nothing, we had nothing. But we have moved forward and will continue forward, because we have great motivation and because we have a community that always responds to the initiatives we put in place and we are aware that the citizen needs us’.
‘A report from WHO Europeof December 2022 – Ferrante then announced – highlights that in Italy 45% of citizens show rehabilitation needs: we are talking about 27 million people. We are here, we want to be useful, we thank the institutions and confirm that we are at their side. We thank the other health professions and ensure maximum collaboration, in a virtuous network in which the citizen always remains at the centre.
The regional coordinator of Lazio of the Italian Federation of Health and Hospital Companies (FIASO), Giuseppe Quintavalle, instead underlined that ‘the hospital, whether large or small, without the territory is nothing and the territory, without the large hospital or without the small hospital, is nothing. We must therefore work on the concepts of intersection and multi-professionalism. Today there are not only physiotherapists, who deserve an important study for what will be the future activities of the territory, of the Community House, where we must work to provide healthcare through initiative and no longer through waiting. In fact, we wait too long. If, for example, we always increase the offer we will never solve the problem of waiting lists‘.
According to Quintavalle, ‘accredited private and public sectors must work together: Lazio has finally started to include performance in ReCUPs. And I want to underline that ours is one of the best healthcare services. Let’s not compare ourselves with the United States: we have equity, universality, gratuitousness and, let’s not forget, we have great professionalism, because we really put great passion into what we do. We will contribute together to the reorganization of the new models, within which we must understand the technical nature of some professional figures who, in my opinion, over time have been kept, not just on the margins, but considered secondary. Just think of the importance of the physiotherapist in the improvement he can have on the health of a person who is not necessarily elderly. We have two thousand more over centenarians per year: it is a wonderful result, we are a health system that works.
The councilor of the Order of Doctors-Surgeons and Dentists of the Province of Rome, Valentina Grimaldi. ‘Omceo Roma – his words – truly believes that the future of our healthcare is to be found in the integration of the different professional figures present in the area, at the level of the different patient care settings. Events like this first regional congress of OFI Lazio bring together different specialists, but above all they contribute to what training must be, because to work in a team it is necessary to train, precisely in respect of one’s own professionalism and skills.
Then the parallel with the world of motors. ‘At the center of all our efforts – explained the Omceo Roma representative – there must be the patient and effective and efficient management cannot start from a single individual, from a single professional but there must be multiple figures present professionals who, together, contribute to the well-being of that person and their family. In the future I would like to imagine the patient a bit like Ferrari during the pit stop: just as happens with Formula 1 cars, which can count on many mechanics when, for example, they stop to change tires , even the patient, be it a child, an elderly person or a person who needs us, must be assisted by all the public health actors who contribute to his well-being.
In a message sent to participants, the President of the VII Health Commission of Lazio, Alessia Savo, wrote that ‘this interesting and important appointment for the Order of Physiotherapists of Lazio, which celebrates the first regional congress, underlines how necessary and increasingly compelling it is to discuss the offer healthcare that responds to chronic-degenerative diseases. And this is because a country like ours has been experiencing, for a long time now and with projections that we institutions too have the duty to modify, a long demographic winter, with an increasingly elderly population in need of assistance, especially in terms of chronic pathologies and those linked to the loss of autonomy”.
“This is why – continued Savo in the note – physiotherapy and the professional figures connected to it are of ever-increasing importance in our country , implementing two of the care processes that are more necessary than ever to respond to the needs of patient-users: the strengthening of prevention and integrated care for the chronically ill. And I like to underline the concepts included in the subtitle of this day which represent exactly the guidelines of the action of the Lazio Region, led by President Francesco Rocca, in the approach to the patient and his health: equity , proximity, humanization and sustainability’.
‘A healthcare – he continued – within everyone’s reach and accessible to anyone, a proximity medicine that allows citizens to find assistance and care at home proper’, a concept of taking care of the patient that respects his dignity and takes into account the human value of the person and a healthcare offer that responds to the needs of the population with appropriate tools and resources, without waste but with effective responses commensurate with needs are the cornerstones of our administrative action’.
‘As president of the VII Commission on Health, Social Policies, Social-Health Integration and Welfare of the Lazio Region– Savo concluded in the letter- I intended, since I took office, to work, among others, precisely in the direction of improving the standards of assistance and care for that segment of the fragile population, including the elderly generation, which certainly represents the largest part of our country and more in need of receiving adequate services as well as a dignified and extremely human healthcare offering. A treatment that must not be limited to being healthcare, medical, in a word: physical. What we must be able to ensure to our elderly is also and above all the emotional and psychological well-being which proves to be fundamental in the process of daily assistance and care’.
The institutional greetings then left room for the three sessions ‘Organisational models and development of physiotherapy’, ‘Tools and strategies for innovation in physiotherapy’ and ‘Looking at freelance work. Connection prospects’.
The 1st Regional Congress of the Order of Physiotherapists of Lazio closed with a Round Table on the topics covered during the day, while in the final session of the conference the 3 most deserving posters were awarded, evaluated by an external Committee of Auditors.
The president of OFI Lazio, Annamaria Servadio, was extremely satisfied. ‘The balance – he told the Dire agency – is really positive. The next steps are to try to implement what we have been promoting for some time: first of all the initiative physiotherapy model, testing the proposal that we intend to present for adapted physical activity in the Lazio region< /strong>. In the meantime, we have already sent our brief request to the Order of Pharmacists of Rome to implement that reform on the pharmacy services and write what the physiotherapist, in fact, can do within the pharmacies .All this to achieve and give our contribution as an Order to the redesign of territorial healthcare in our region’.
Because ‘Physiotherapy is a science, the physiotherapist is a profession’.
‘Certainly – the number one of OFI Lazio then highlighted – digitalization is a very important aspect of Ministerial Decree 77, in which the entire system is severely lacking, in particular the management ofchronic conditions . On fundamental issues such as telemedicine and telerehabilitation we are still behind, because even in the Lazio region, with the exception of a few experimental projects, the processes from a purely point of view of identification of the performances within the Nomenclator, specific for rehabilitation. We must therefore rethink a model of physiotherapy, but we cannot do it alone: we must rethink it together with all the professions that, together with us, govern rehabilitation, together with the other healthcare professions and with all the actors of this system, first and foremost the institutions’ .
The proceedings were opened by the President of the Lazio Regional Council, Antonello Aurigemma. ‘After meeting last September, on the occasion of World Physiotherapy Day, for the conference held in Pisana – he reminded those present – today I am very proud to participate in the first regional conference of the order of physiotherapists of Lazio. It is important to have an overall vision, and this is possible through discussion and listening to those who work in healthcare every day. Your role has strategic relevance both in terms of prevention and to strengthen treatments. Among other things, with the increasing age of the population, your activities are even more valuable and necessary. Therefore, these opportunities are also useful to delve deeper into some aspects, such as the importance of technological innovation. As a regional administration, our role is to accompany and support your activities in this growth path. Therefore, we will guarantee maximum availability also in the future for new initiatives, in order to carry out a synergistic collaboration.
To speak then it was the President of the National Federation of Physiotherapists Orders (FNOFI), Piero Ferrante. ‘It’s not easy – he was keen to point out – but ours is a long job. We are in the area, we are at the service of citizens, we are ready to respond to the new health needs that citizens have the right to see fulfilled. A few years have given us a completely different panorama: from a demographic point of view, because we have over 14 million over 65s, and from an epidemiological point of view, with chronicity and multimorbidity. And, probably, we need to review some of our paradigms. Today is a day in which Lazio demonstrates that physiotherapists have ideas, know how to implement them and are always at the service of the citizen. We are an Order born from nothing, we had nothing. But we have moved forward and will continue forward, because we have great motivation and because we have a community that always responds to the initiatives we put in place and we are aware that the citizen needs us’.
‘A report from WHO Europeof December 2022 – Ferrante then announced – highlights that in Italy 45% of citizens show rehabilitation needs: we are talking about 27 million people. We are here, we want to be useful, we thank the institutions and confirm that we are at their side. We thank the other health professions and ensure maximum collaboration, in a virtuous network in which the citizen always remains at the centre.
The regional coordinator of Lazio of the Italian Federation of Health and Hospital Companies (FIASO), Giuseppe Quintavalle, instead underlined that ‘the hospital, whether large or small, without the territory is nothing and the territory, without the large hospital or without the small hospital, is nothing. We must therefore work on the concepts of intersection and multi-professionalism. Today there are not only physiotherapists, who deserve an important study for what will be the future activities of the territory, of the Community House, where we must work to provide healthcare through initiative and no longer through waiting. In fact, we wait too long. If, for example, we always increase the offer we will never solve the problem of waiting lists‘.
According to Quintavalle, ‘accredited private and public sectors must work together: Lazio has finally started to include performance in ReCUPs. And I want to underline that ours is one of the best healthcare services. Let’s not compare ourselves with the United States: we have equity, universality, gratuitousness and, let’s not forget, we have great professionalism, because we really put great passion into what we do. We will contribute together to the reorganization of the new models, within which we must understand the technical nature of some professional figures who, in my opinion, over time have been kept, not just on the margins, but considered secondary. Just think of the importance of the physiotherapist in the improvement he can have on the health of a person who is not necessarily elderly. We have two thousand more over centenarians per year: it is a wonderful result, we are a health system that works.
The councilor of the Order of Doctors-Surgeons and Dentists of the Province of Rome, Valentina Grimaldi. ‘Omceo Roma – his words – truly believes that the future of our healthcare is to be found in the integration of the different professional figures present in the area, at the level of the different patient care settings. Events like this first regional congress of OFI Lazio bring together different specialists, but above all they contribute to what training must be, because to work in a team it is necessary to train, precisely in respect of one’s own professionalism and skills.
Then the parallel with the world of motors. ‘At the center of all our efforts – explained the Omceo Roma representative – there must be the patient and effective and efficient management cannot start from a single individual, from a single professional but there must be multiple figures present professionals who, together, contribute to the well-being of that person and their family. In the future I would like to imagine the patient a bit like Ferrari during the pit stop: just as happens with Formula 1 cars, which can count on many mechanics when, for example, they stop to change tires , even the patient, be it a child, an elderly person or a person who needs us, must be assisted by all the public health actors who contribute to his well-being.
In a message sent to participants, the President of the VII Health Commission of Lazio, Alessia Savo, wrote that ‘this interesting and important appointment for the Order of Physiotherapists of Lazio, which celebrates the first regional congress, underlines how necessary and increasingly compelling it is to discuss the offer healthcare that responds to chronic-degenerative diseases. And this is because a country like ours has been experiencing, for a long time now and with projections that we institutions too have the duty to modify, a long demographic winter, with an increasingly elderly population in need of assistance, especially in terms of chronic pathologies and those linked to the loss of autonomy”.
“This is why – continued Savo in the note – physiotherapy and the professional figures connected to it are of ever-increasing importance in our country , implementing two of the care processes that are more necessary than ever to respond to the needs of patient-users: the strengthening of prevention and integrated care for the chronically ill. And I like to underline the concepts included in the subtitle of this day which represent exactly the guidelines of the action of the Lazio Region, led by President Francesco Rocca, in the approach to the patient and his health: equity , proximity, humanization and sustainability’.
‘A healthcare – he continued – within everyone’s reach and accessible to anyone, a proximity medicine that allows citizens to find assistance and care at home proper’, a concept of taking care of the patient that respects his dignity and takes into account the human value of the person and a healthcare offer that responds to the needs of the population with appropriate tools and resources, without waste but with effective responses commensurate with needs are the cornerstones of our administrative action’.
‘As president of the VII Commission on Health, Social Policies, Social-Health Integration and Welfare of the Lazio Region– Savo concluded in the letter- I intended, since I took office, to work, among others, precisely in the direction of improving the standards of assistance and care for that segment of the fragile population, including the elderly generation, which certainly represents the largest part of our country and more in need of receiving adequate services as well as a dignified and extremely human healthcare offering. A treatment that must not be limited to being healthcare, medical, in a word: physical. What we must be able to ensure to our elderly is also and above all the emotional and psychological well-being which proves to be fundamental in the process of daily assistance and care’.
The institutional greetings then left room for the three sessions ‘Organisational models and development of physiotherapy’, ‘Tools and strategies for innovation in physiotherapy’ and ‘Looking at freelance work. Connection prospects’.
The 1st Regional Congress of the Order of Physiotherapists of Lazio closed with a Round Table on the topics covered during the day, while in the final session of the conference the 3 most deserving posters were awarded, evaluated by an external Committee of Auditors.
The president of OFI Lazio, Annamaria Servadio, was extremely satisfied. ‘The balance – he told the Dire agency – is really positive. The next steps are to try to implement what we have been promoting for some time: first of all the initiative physiotherapy model, testing the proposal that we intend to present for adapted physical activity in the Lazio region< /strong>. In the meantime, we have already sent our brief request to the Order of Pharmacists of Rome to implement that reform on the pharmacy services and write what the physiotherapist, in fact, can do within the pharmacies .All this to achieve and give our contribution as an Order to the redesign of territorial healthcare in our region’.
Because ‘Physiotherapy is a science, the physiotherapist is a profession’.
‘When the Board of Directors thought about putting an event like this on the table – began the president of OFI Lazio, Annamaria Servadio, in front of a packed room – she did it because she felt the need to have to deal, within our territories and beyond and with the other professions, which I want to thank. > Physiotherapy, in fact, is a component of rehabilitation, probably the driving one, but we work closely with many other rehabilitation professionals: I am thinking of speech therapists, occupational therapists, psychiatric rehabilitation technicians, to podiatrists, orthoptists, neuropsychomotor therapists. By involving other Orders and looking at the organizational models of Campania and Lombardy, we also wanted to look outside our region, precisely to discuss the development trajectories of physiotherapy‘.
Servadio then focused on the critical issues that have emerged in recent years, ‘critical issues’ – he explained – that we physiotherapists in Lazio feel strongly about. I am referring to the lack of personnel and the organization of the system. This is why we believe that the physiotherapy and rehabilitation model is no longer current. We see it in our territories: the network does not, in fact, allow you to have a physiotherapist available from the moment of the acute situation until the end of the course. And in this network the physiotherapist is fundamental.
‘Certainly – the number one of OFI Lazio then highlighted – digitalization is a very important aspect of Ministerial Decree 77, in which the entire system is severely lacking, in particular the management ofchronic conditions . On fundamental issues such as telemedicine and telerehabilitation we are still behind, because even in the Lazio region, with the exception of a few experimental projects, the processes from a purely point of view of identification of the performances within the Nomenclator, specific for rehabilitation. We must therefore rethink a model of physiotherapy, but we cannot do it alone: we must rethink it together with all the professions that, together with us, govern rehabilitation, together with the other healthcare professions and with all the actors of this system, first and foremost the institutions’ .
The proceedings were opened by the President of the Lazio Regional Council, Antonello Aurigemma. ‘After meeting last September, on the occasion of World Physiotherapy Day, for the conference held in Pisana – he reminded those present – today I am very proud to participate in the first regional conference of the order of physiotherapists of Lazio. It is important to have an overall vision, and this is possible through discussion and listening to those who work in healthcare every day. Your role has strategic relevance both in terms of prevention and to strengthen treatments. Among other things, with the increasing age of the population, your activities are even more valuable and necessary. Therefore, these opportunities are also useful to delve deeper into some aspects, such as the importance of technological innovation. As a regional administration, our role is to accompany and support your activities in this growth path. Therefore, we will guarantee maximum availability also in the future for new initiatives, in order to carry out a synergistic collaboration.
To speak then it was the President of the National Federation of Physiotherapists Orders (FNOFI), Piero Ferrante. ‘It’s not easy – he was keen to point out – but ours is a long job. We are in the area, we are at the service of citizens, we are ready to respond to the new health needs that citizens have the right to see fulfilled. A few years have given us a completely different panorama: from a demographic point of view, because we have over 14 million over 65s, and from an epidemiological point of view, with chronicity and multimorbidity. And, probably, we need to review some of our paradigms. Today is a day in which Lazio demonstrates that physiotherapists have ideas, know how to implement them and are always at the service of the citizen. We are an Order born from nothing, we had nothing. But we have moved forward and will continue forward, because we have great motivation and because we have a community that always responds to the initiatives we put in place and we are aware that the citizen needs us’.
‘A report from WHO Europeof December 2022 – Ferrante then announced – highlights that in Italy 45% of citizens show rehabilitation needs: we are talking about 27 million people. We are here, we want to be useful, we thank the institutions and confirm that we are at their side. We thank the other health professions and ensure maximum collaboration, in a virtuous network in which the citizen always remains at the centre.
The regional coordinator of Lazio of the Italian Federation of Health and Hospital Companies (FIASO), Giuseppe Quintavalle, instead underlined that ‘the hospital, whether large or small, without the territory is nothing and the territory, without the large hospital or without the small hospital, is nothing. We must therefore work on the concepts of intersection and multi-professionalism. Today there are not only physiotherapists, who deserve an important study for what will be the future activities of the territory, of the Community House, where we must work to provide healthcare through initiative and no longer through waiting. In fact, we wait too long. If, for example, we always increase the offer we will never solve the problem of waiting lists‘.
According to Quintavalle, ‘accredited private and public sectors must work together: Lazio has finally started to include performance in ReCUPs. And I want to underline that ours is one of the best healthcare services. Let’s not compare ourselves with the United States: we have equity, universality, gratuitousness and, let’s not forget, we have great professionalism, because we really put great passion into what we do. We will contribute together to the reorganization of the new models, within which we must understand the technical nature of some professional figures who, in my opinion, over time have been kept, not just on the margins, but considered secondary. Just think of the importance of the physiotherapist in the improvement he can have on the health of a person who is not necessarily elderly. We have two thousand more over centenarians per year: it is a wonderful result, we are a health system that works.
The councilor of the Order of Doctors-Surgeons and Dentists of the Province of Rome, Valentina Grimaldi. ‘Omceo Roma – his words – truly believes that the future of our healthcare is to be found in the integration of the different professional figures present in the area, at the level of the different patient care settings. Events like this first regional congress of OFI Lazio bring together different specialists, but above all they contribute to what training must be, because to work in a team it is necessary to train, precisely in respect of one’s own professionalism and skills.
Then the parallel with the world of motors. ‘At the center of all our efforts – explained the Omceo Roma representative – there must be the patient and effective and efficient management cannot start from a single individual, from a single professional but there must be multiple figures present professionals who, together, contribute to the well-being of that person and their family. In the future I would like to imagine the patient a bit like Ferrari during the pit stop: just as happens with Formula 1 cars, which can count on many mechanics when, for example, they stop to change tires , even the patient, be it a child, an elderly person or a person who needs us, must be assisted by all the public health actors who contribute to his well-being.
In a message sent to participants, the President of the VII Health Commission of Lazio, Alessia Savo, wrote that ‘this interesting and important appointment for the Order of Physiotherapists of Lazio, which celebrates the first regional congress, underlines how necessary and increasingly compelling it is to discuss the offer healthcare that responds to chronic-degenerative diseases. And this is because a country like ours has been experiencing, for a long time now and with projections that we institutions too have the duty to modify, a long demographic winter, with an increasingly elderly population in need of assistance, especially in terms of chronic pathologies and those linked to the loss of autonomy”.
“This is why – continued Savo in the note – physiotherapy and the professional figures connected to it are of ever-increasing importance in our country , implementing two of the care processes that are more necessary than ever to respond to the needs of patient-users: the strengthening of prevention and integrated care for the chronically ill. And I like to underline the concepts included in the subtitle of this day which represent exactly the guidelines of the action of the Lazio Region, led by President Francesco Rocca, in the approach to the patient and his health: equity , proximity, humanization and sustainability’.
‘A healthcare – he continued – within everyone’s reach and accessible to anyone, a proximity medicine that allows citizens to find assistance and care at home proper’, a concept of taking care of the patient that respects his dignity and takes into account the human value of the person and a healthcare offer that responds to the needs of the population with appropriate tools and resources, without waste but with effective responses commensurate with needs are the cornerstones of our administrative action’.
‘As president of the VII Commission on Health, Social Policies, Social-Health Integration and Welfare of the Lazio Region– Savo concluded in the letter- I intended, since I took office, to work, among others, precisely in the direction of improving the standards of assistance and care for that segment of the fragile population, including the elderly generation, which certainly represents the largest part of our country and more in need of receiving adequate services as well as a dignified and extremely human healthcare offering. A treatment that must not be limited to being healthcare, medical, in a word: physical. What we must be able to ensure to our elderly is also and above all the emotional and psychological well-being which proves to be fundamental in the process of daily assistance and care’.
The institutional greetings then left room for the three sessions ‘Organisational models and development of physiotherapy’, ‘Tools and strategies for innovation in physiotherapy’ and ‘Looking at freelance work. Connection prospects’.
The 1st Regional Congress of the Order of Physiotherapists of Lazio closed with a Round Table on the topics covered during the day, while in the final session of the conference the 3 most deserving posters were awarded, evaluated by an external Committee of Auditors.
The president of OFI Lazio, Annamaria Servadio, was extremely satisfied. ‘The balance – he told the Dire agency – is really positive. The next steps are to try to implement what we have been promoting for some time: first of all the initiative physiotherapy model, testing the proposal that we intend to present for adapted physical activity in the Lazio region< /strong>. In the meantime, we have already sent our brief request to the Order of Pharmacists of Rome to implement that reform on the pharmacy services and write what the physiotherapist, in fact, can do within the pharmacies .All this to achieve and give our contribution as an Order to the redesign of territorial healthcare in our region’.
Because ‘Physiotherapy is a science, the physiotherapist is a profession’.
ROME – ‘Physiotherapy is a science, the physiotherapist is a profession’. This is the message that greeted the numerous participants who spoke in recent days in Rome at the 1st Regional Congress of the Order of Physiotherapists of Lazio entitled ‘The prospects of physiotherapy in the Lazio region: equity, proximity, humanisation and sustainability of the system Regional Healthcare’.
Many healthcare figures closely linked to that of the physiotherapist met at the Technical Auditorium: speech therapists, podiatrists, occupational therapists, orthoptists and ophthalmology assistants, developmental age neuro and psychomotor therapists, professional educators and psychiatric rehabilitation technicians.
‘When the Board of Directors thought about putting an event like this on the table – began the president of OFI Lazio, Annamaria Servadio, in front of a packed room – she did it because she felt the need to have to deal, within our territories and beyond and with the other professions, which I want to thank. > Physiotherapy, in fact, is a component of rehabilitation, probably the driving one, but we work closely with many other rehabilitation professionals: I am thinking of speech therapists, occupational therapists, psychiatric rehabilitation technicians, to podiatrists, orthoptists, neuropsychomotor therapists. By involving other Orders and looking at the organizational models of Campania and Lombardy, we also wanted to look outside our region, precisely to discuss the development trajectories of physiotherapy‘.
Servadio then focused on the critical issues that have emerged in recent years, ‘critical issues’ – he explained – that we physiotherapists in Lazio feel strongly about. I am referring to the lack of personnel and the organization of the system. This is why we believe that the physiotherapy and rehabilitation model is no longer current. We see it in our territories: the network does not, in fact, allow you to have a physiotherapist available from the moment of the acute situation until the end of the course. And in this network the physiotherapist is fundamental.
‘Certainly – the number one of OFI Lazio then highlighted – digitalization is a very important aspect of Ministerial Decree 77, in which the entire system is severely lacking, in particular the management ofchronic conditions . On fundamental issues such as telemedicine and telerehabilitation we are still behind, because even in the Lazio region, with the exception of a few experimental projects, the processes from a purely point of view of identification of the performances within the Nomenclator, specific for rehabilitation. We must therefore rethink a model of physiotherapy, but we cannot do it alone: we must rethink it together with all the professions that, together with us, govern rehabilitation, together with the other healthcare professions and with all the actors of this system, first and foremost the institutions’ .
The proceedings were opened by the President of the Lazio Regional Council, Antonello Aurigemma. ‘After meeting last September, on the occasion of World Physiotherapy Day, for the conference held in Pisana – he reminded those present – today I am very proud to participate in the first regional conference of the order of physiotherapists of Lazio. It is important to have an overall vision, and this is possible through discussion and listening to those who work in healthcare every day. Your role has strategic relevance both in terms of prevention and to strengthen treatments. Among other things, with the increasing age of the population, your activities are even more valuable and necessary. Therefore, these opportunities are also useful to delve deeper into some aspects, such as the importance of technological innovation. As a regional administration, our role is to accompany and support your activities in this growth path. Therefore, we will guarantee maximum availability also in the future for new initiatives, in order to carry out a synergistic collaboration.
To speak then it was the President of the National Federation of Physiotherapists Orders (FNOFI), Piero Ferrante. ‘It’s not easy – he was keen to point out – but ours is a long job. We are in the area, we are at the service of citizens, we are ready to respond to the new health needs that citizens have the right to see fulfilled. A few years have given us a completely different panorama: from a demographic point of view, because we have over 14 million over 65s, and from an epidemiological point of view, with chronicity and multimorbidity. And, probably, we need to review some of our paradigms. Today is a day in which Lazio demonstrates that physiotherapists have ideas, know how to implement them and are always at the service of the citizen. We are an Order born from nothing, we had nothing. But we have moved forward and will continue forward, because we have great motivation and because we have a community that always responds to the initiatives we put in place and we are aware that the citizen needs us’.
‘A report from WHO Europeof December 2022 – Ferrante then announced – highlights that in Italy 45% of citizens show rehabilitation needs: we are talking about 27 million people. We are here, we want to be useful, we thank the institutions and confirm that we are at their side. We thank the other health professions and ensure maximum collaboration, in a virtuous network in which the citizen always remains at the centre.
The regional coordinator of Lazio of the Italian Federation of Health and Hospital Companies (FIASO), Giuseppe Quintavalle, instead underlined that ‘the hospital, whether large or small, without the territory is nothing and the territory, without the large hospital or without the small hospital, is nothing. We must therefore work on the concepts of intersection and multi-professionalism. Today there are not only physiotherapists, who deserve an important study for what will be the future activities of the territory, of the Community House, where we must work to provide healthcare through initiative and no longer through waiting. In fact, we wait too long. If, for example, we always increase the offer we will never solve the problem of waiting lists‘.
According to Quintavalle, ‘accredited private and public sectors must work together: Lazio has finally started to include performance in ReCUPs. And I want to underline that ours is one of the best healthcare services. Let’s not compare ourselves with the United States: we have equity, universality, gratuitousness and, let’s not forget, we have great professionalism, because we really put great passion into what we do. We will contribute together to the reorganization of the new models, within which we must understand the technical nature of some professional figures who, in my opinion, over time have been kept, not just on the margins, but considered secondary. Just think of the importance of the physiotherapist in the improvement he can have on the health of a person who is not necessarily elderly. We have two thousand more over centenarians per year: it is a wonderful result, we are a health system that works.
The councilor of the Order of Doctors-Surgeons and Dentists of the Province of Rome, Valentina Grimaldi. ‘Omceo Roma – his words – truly believes that the future of our healthcare is to be found in the integration of the different professional figures present in the area, at the level of the different patient care settings. Events like this first regional congress of OFI Lazio bring together different specialists, but above all they contribute to what training must be, because to work in a team it is necessary to train, precisely in respect of one’s own professionalism and skills.
Then the parallel with the world of motors. ‘At the center of all our efforts – explained the Omceo Roma representative – there must be the patient and effective and efficient management cannot start from a single individual, from a single professional but there must be multiple figures present professionals who, together, contribute to the well-being of that person and their family. In the future I would like to imagine the patient a bit like Ferrari during the pit stop: just as happens with Formula 1 cars, which can count on many mechanics when, for example, they stop to change tires , even the patient, be it a child, an elderly person or a person who needs us, must be assisted by all the public health actors who contribute to his well-being.
In a message sent to participants, the President of the VII Health Commission of Lazio, Alessia Savo, wrote that ‘this interesting and important appointment for the Order of Physiotherapists of Lazio, which celebrates the first regional congress, underlines how necessary and increasingly compelling it is to discuss the offer healthcare that responds to chronic-degenerative diseases. And this is because a country like ours has been experiencing, for a long time now and with projections that we institutions too have the duty to modify, a long demographic winter, with an increasingly elderly population in need of assistance, especially in terms of chronic pathologies and those linked to the loss of autonomy”.
“This is why – continued Savo in the note – physiotherapy and the professional figures connected to it are of ever-increasing importance in our country , implementing two of the care processes that are more necessary than ever to respond to the needs of patient-users: the strengthening of prevention and integrated care for the chronically ill. And I like to underline the concepts included in the subtitle of this day which represent exactly the guidelines of the action of the Lazio Region, led by President Francesco Rocca, in the approach to the patient and his health: equity , proximity, humanization and sustainability’.
‘A healthcare – he continued – within everyone’s reach and accessible to anyone, a proximity medicine that allows citizens to find assistance and care at home proper’, a concept of taking care of the patient that respects his dignity and takes into account the human value of the person and a healthcare offer that responds to the needs of the population with appropriate tools and resources, without waste but with effective responses commensurate with needs are the cornerstones of our administrative action’.
‘As president of the VII Commission on Health, Social Policies, Social-Health Integration and Welfare of the Lazio Region– Savo concluded in the letter- I intended, since I took office, to work, among others, precisely in the direction of improving the standards of assistance and care for that segment of the fragile population, including the elderly generation, which certainly represents the largest part of our country and more in need of receiving adequate services as well as a dignified and extremely human healthcare offering. A treatment that must not be limited to being healthcare, medical, in a word: physical. What we must be able to ensure to our elderly is also and above all the emotional and psychological well-being which proves to be fundamental in the process of daily assistance and care’.
The institutional greetings then left room for the three sessions ‘Organisational models and development of physiotherapy’, ‘Tools and strategies for innovation in physiotherapy’ and ‘Looking at freelance work. Connection prospects’.
The 1st Regional Congress of the Order of Physiotherapists of Lazio closed with a Round Table on the topics covered during the day, while in the final session of the conference the 3 most deserving posters were awarded, evaluated by an external Committee of Auditors.
The president of OFI Lazio, Annamaria Servadio, was extremely satisfied. ‘The balance – he told the Dire agency – is really positive. The next steps are to try to implement what we have been promoting for some time: first of all the initiative physiotherapy model, testing the proposal that we intend to present for adapted physical activity in the Lazio region< /strong>. In the meantime, we have already sent our brief request to the Order of Pharmacists of Rome to implement that reform on the pharmacy services and write what the physiotherapist, in fact, can do within the pharmacies .All this to achieve and give our contribution as an Order to the redesign of territorial healthcare in our region’.
Because ‘Physiotherapy is a science, the physiotherapist is a profession’.