In Piedmont there is a shortage of doctors and paediatriciansthe implementation of the health works envisaged by the Pnrr It’s still going slowlymore than half of healthcare services come provided by private structures and accessing public healthcare is so difficult that 8.8% of families he just gave up on it.
It is a merciless picture of Italian healthcare that is painted by Gimbe foundationwhich starts from the national numbers and then goes into detail about the regional ones. And Piedmont, compared to other Italian regions, has overall acceptable numbers in some sectors but in others it is doing very badly. In particular, what is once again striking is the data on shortage of general practitioners and, even more, of paediatricians of free choicea sector in which we are even the worst region in Italy. In detail, the average number of children assisted by each Piedmontese pediatrician is 1,108the highest in Italy: above one thousand, besides us, there are only Valle d’Aosta (1,047), the Autonomous Province of Bolzano (1,026) and Veneto (1,011). The national average is 898 while, according to what the foundation underlines, the optimal ratio would even be 600almost half of what is recorded in Piedmont. «The alarm about the shortage of pediatricians – explains Nino Cartabellotta, president of the Gimbe Foundation – today it is raised by parents of all Regions, from North to South. Their testimonies highlight bureaucratic problems, pediatricians with an excessive number of patients and the impossibility of registering their children with the family pediatrician, potentially putting their health at risk, above all of the smallest and most vulnerable.”
It’s not much better adult patients. The ceiling of 1,500 patients assisted is exceeded by 49% of general practitioners even if the average number of patients assisted stands at a more acceptable 1,385 (the national average is 1,353). To achieve at least one doctor for every 1,250 patients (the optimal ratio is an unattainable 1,000) 296 more doctors would be needed.
More generally, in Piedmont we have 2.09 employed doctors and 5.4 employed nurses per thousand inhabitants. A problem, that of the shortage of health professionals, such that in recent days the possible use of Indian or South American nurses was also mentioned in Piedmont hospitals.
And, speaking of structures, Gimbe also takes stock of the implementation of the interventions envisaged by the Pnrrwhich involve the creation of community homes (facilities where there will be a booking point connected to the cup, general practitioners, paediatricians, nursing services and emergency medical services), territorial operations centers (they carry out functions in conjunction with all services and with the emergency and urgency system, also through information and telemedicine tools) and community hospitals (they perform an intermediate function between the home and hospital admission for low clinical intensity health interventions). Of the former, 17 out of 82 were activated in Piedmont (21% against an Italian average of 19%). Of the second ones, 27 out of 43 (63% against the national 59%). But with community hospitals we are stuck at a dismal 0 out of 27 (obviously equal to 0% against an Italian average of 13%). 57% (52% in Italy) of the additional sub-intensive care beds have also been activated.
And so we arrive at the figure which, alone, summarizes the difficulties of public health in responding to the needs of citizens. In Piedmont the percentage of families who have renounced healthcare services in 2023 is equal to 8.8% (Italian average 7.6%). Still high but fortunately decreasing compared to 2022 (9.6%). «Data, narratives and surveys – summarizes Nino Cartabellotta – demonstrate that today the country’s real emergency is the National Health Service, whose stability is close to the point of no return. The founding principles of universalism, fairness and equality have been betrayed and the constitutional right to health protection is slowly crumbling, in particular for the weakest socio-economic groups, the elderly and the frail and for those who live in disadvantaged areas”.
