The U.A.P. to the Government: “Wise decision not to give pharmacies the services of analysis laboratories”
The message from Mariastella Giorlandino, President of the National Union of Clinics, Clinics, Institutions and Private Hospitals (U.A.P.) is clear.
ROME – “We greet with gratitude and satisfactionthe wise decision of the Meloni Government to exclude the rule relating to the ‘Urgent provisions to promote the provision of pharmacy services’ from the legislative decree of 7 June 2024 n. 73containing ‘Urgent measures to reduce waiting list times for healthcare services'”. This is what we read in a note fromMariastella Giorlandino, President of the National Union of Clinics, Polyclinics, Institutions and Private Hospitals (U.A.P.).
According to the U.A.P. “the rule, which opens up the possibilityfor pharmacies to carry out analytical laboratory servicesno longer limited to the self-monitoring test permitted up to now, could transform pharmacies not only into analysis laboratories but in health service providers, despite the fact that the pharmacist does not possess the cognitive and instrumental tools to transform the simple finding deriving from the blood or genetic sample into a report accompanied by units of measurement, reference intervals and decision-making limits”, he continues the note.
PHARMAcies DO NOT HAVE SKILLS TO PROVIDE LABORATORY SERVICES
According to Giorlandino “these elements, indispensable for clinical evaluation, are the responsibility, together with the guarantee and control of analytical quality, exclusively of laboratory medicine professionals and therefore of public and private laboratories and multi-specialist centres, which count over 95,000 facilities on the national territory, as well as for all other diagnostic tests – adds Giorlandino – We will firmly oppose in the parliament any regulatory plan potentially capable of giving rise to absurd confusion for patients. and for clinicians with respect to the results of clinical analyzes which can only be carried out by competent clinical analysis and diagnostic laboratories. Pharmacies do not have the skills to provide services that analysis laboratories and the multi-specialist centers so far carry out after having followed the expected and certified specific training programs, following complex regional authorization and accreditation procedures, after having respected the over 420 requirements necessary to start the activity to protect the health of citizens, adapted the own premises to the best hygienic – sanitary as well as technological and logistical standards, with important economic and human resources investments”.
LAWS OF THIS PARLIAMENT NON-VIOLINO ARTICLE 32 CONSTITUTION
Giorlandino concludes by trusting “always in the High Authority and Protection of the Constitution carried out masterfully and daily with wise care and impartial vision by the Presidency of the Republic for the protection of the laws. We are certain that the laws under consideration by this Parliament they will not be able to violate article 32 of our Constitution, a high constitutional guarantee for the protection of public and private health; in this perspective, we are in favor of maintaining the current legislation (il Legislative Decree no. 153/2009), according to which the execution of laboratory tests in pharmacies remains limited to “first instance analytical services falling within the scope of self-monitoring” i.e. tests that can be managed directly by patients or by the pharmacist through capillary blood sampling and for everything else, for the purposes of authorization for any diagnosis to maintain the Legislative Decree no. 502/1992 currently in force”.