The plan is there, on paper. Now it must be translated into concrete actions within the established time frame. Even if the difficulties are already emerging: the personnel will not be sufficient and the money has to be found.

The regional council (led by the vice-president Giuseppe Fasolino) has approved the "general provision for the planning of territorial assistance", which redesigns the island's health system. Seventy pages of programs for which deadlines have also been set.

There are two prerequisites for the design. The first: the Sardinian population is getting older. Two: "In such a vast and sparsely populated area", we read, "the road network is not adequately structured to guarantee a rapid connection between the various geographical areas, with an important impact on access to public services and in particular -sanitary”.

The main objective therefore is to bring doctors and the population closer and try not to make everyone end up in the hospital, therefore in the major centres.

The Region has set itself a deadline within which to conclude all the interventions: December 2026. But what does the plan consist of?

First of all, it aims at the "implementation of integrated patient management through the strengthening of hospital-territorial integration and the activation of care pathways".

It should happen through the "preparation of shared operational protocols for the development of models and tools to ensure continuity of care for the chronic patient and in particular during the transition between the different levels of assistance" and the "continuous training of multidisciplinary teams" .

Then further “community houses” will be created, ie “territorial auxiliary structures of the Regional Health Service, which collect the extra-hospital offer of the health service, integrated with the social service”. A further 55 are planned, compared to the 14 already existing: 50 to be financed through the Pnrr, while the remaining 5 through additional resources still to be found. They will also be the "privileged venue where, in the same physical space, the territorial services that provide health and social services are located, also providing for the presence of the primary care psychologist, within them as an ideal context for the creation of listening points".

The focus is also on the activation of 24 territorial operations centers by 31 December 2023. The aim is thus to reduce "improper access to the emergency room, the inappropriateness of hospital admissions and inappropriate days of hospitalisation".

By 31 December 2026, the Region also wants to open 33 community hospitals which will have an "intermediate function between home and hospitalization, in order to avoid improper hospitalizations and to encourage protected discharges in places more suitable for treatment needs of the assisted person and closer to home".

So far the intentions. But the junta is also aware of its limits and those of its budget. So much so that the document also speaks of "critical issues". Which "are linked to the entry into force of the reform" of the Sardinian health system, "and to the personnel procurement processes which, at the moment, are not sufficient to guarantee total coverage of services in the area".

In addition, the region has been paying its entire health system since 2008. And "at the time, account was not taken of the greater costs deriving from the expansion of the territorial network which, at the moment, must be found from the regional budget".

(Unioneonline/E.Fr.)

© Riproduzione riservata