Every year 16,000 "inappropriate" days of hospitalization in Sardinia, for a cost of 11 million . Not indifferent costs for the state of public health.

The reason? Inpatients over 70 on the island, having no family members who can assist them at home or a pension that allows them to pay the fees of an RSA, and with local medicine that struggles to take care of them once they leave the structures, pass on average four days overdue in hospital beds .

Hospitals and emergency rooms, already suffering from the lack of beds, must therefore make up for the shortcomings of the social assistance system and basic medicine.

The figure (there are 2.1 million "inappropriate" days of hospitalization throughout Italy) emerges from a survey by Fadoi, the scientific society of internal medicine, conducted on 98 hospital facilities scattered throughout Italy.

In Sardinian hospitals in the medical departments, over 70 patients are over half of the total . When the doctor orders the patient's resignation, explains Fadoi, that date almost never corresponds with the actual resignation. Thus the elderly continue to burden hospitals because they do not have family members or carers able to assist them but also because there are no intermediate structures in the area .

"The problem - comments the president of Fadoi Sardegna, Carlo Usai - is dictated by the fact that there is a lack of hospital-territory integration with a low number of beds in nursing homes, a low number of low-intensity hospital beds".

(Unioneonline/L)

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