Cagliari, health system short circuit: dozens of ambulances blocked in hospitals

New Year, nothing changes in Cagliari hospitals. Thirteen ambulances lined up outside the Brotzu emergency room. One less in front of the Policlinico Duilio Casula. The situation is calmer, however, at Santissima Trinità. But even there, even if this is no longer news, the waits for patients are long.

This is the (devastating) picture crystallized when it was not yet 6:00 pm on January 2: a stalemate certified by photos and videos, rather than by the statistical data made public through the official report published in real time by Sardegna Salute, the Region's website dedicated to the health sector. Because there are numbers that escape monitoring: the data provided are not false, but they suffer from the lack of adequate tracking of some patients still to be unpacked. That is, those who arrived at the hospital by ambulance, were taken in charge with the triage that evaluates their conditions for the assignment of the "color" and then remain in the corridor, or in the medical rooms. For hours and hours. Even entire days.

Held on the stretchers, in fact, that had been used for transport on board the 118 vehicles. The consequence: they wait inside, the rescuers - who no longer have the stretcher in the ambulance - wait, also ensuring surveillance of the patient. And the territory remains uncovered, because the rescue vehicles are blocked by a short circuit.

At Brotzu it also happened that the 118 crews were held up even though there were free beds in the medical rooms inside. And patients could have been transferred to those.

"True, it happened, and I claim it," explains the head of the Arnas emergency room, Fabrizio Polo, "because there is a reason: here the staff is not enough, we do not have enough triage technicians. And the departments are full, we cannot carry out hospitalization due to lack of beds. But I cannot allow a patient to be abandoned to himself. By keeping him on the stretchers of the ambulances, those who are ill are monitored by the 118 rescuers: it is a question of safety."

The ambulance crews   they refer to Areus and not to hospitals: it is often the volunteers, therefore, who go to plug the gaps in a hospital system that quickly goes haywire.

The risk is that the repercussions will hit the rescue system: if ambulances are stopped in the hospital, who will go to save those who ask for help? There are no emergency medical services, the departments of peripheral hospitals are closing. There are fewer and fewer family doctors. "If it continues like this, we will be counting the dead here," says a rescue worker with many years of experience.