Oristano: «The outstanding disability practices have more than halved, we will clear them by June»

In 16 months the Oristano Local Health Authority has more than halved the number of backlogs of disability commissions, and by June 2024 it plans to eliminate them.

This was assured by the general director of the ASL 5 of Oristano, Angelo Maria Serusi, and Dr. Mario Piras, director of the Health Professions Service of the same company.

Reassurance that comes after the alarm launched by the province's patronages on the excessively long waiting times for the conclusion of the bureaucratic process for the recognition of the state of civil disability which is needed to access the expected economic benefits.

Since April 2022, when the new general management arrived, the cases that had been stopped since the pre-Covid period, which were 15 thousand, have decreased to around 6 thousand.

«The only commission that has never stopped is the one for cancer patients», specified Dr. Piras. «We always respect the scheduled times. The invitation arrives within fifteen days of the application being submitted. All the others had also stopped with the advent of the pandemic and retirement quota 100. With the arrival of the new general management, which also took up the requests of the mayors and their request for a commission in their respective territories, we activated a November 2022 twelve commissions, while previously there was only one in Oristano and one in Ghilarza. Now, however, the active commissions are one in the district of Ghilarza and one in Bosa, five in Oristano, one in Terralba and another in Ales. We have thus avoided long journeys for users from the more marginal areas to Oristano. But when the commissions started we found ourselves with a backlog of 15 thousand cases. There was no staff, but the applications continued to arrive, another 5 thousand arrived. The waiting times were two years, now we are down to ten months and now the objective is to clear the entire backlog by the first half of 2024."

The general director, Dr. Angelo Maria Serusi, added: «A few months ago we were called by the auditors to carry out all activities within service hours. A recent resolution by the Region clarified that, to reduce waiting lists, the commissions can meet beyond normal hours in exchange for an attendance fee of 120 euros".