"Please don't call it health tourism. Patients don't even enjoy traveling abroad for surgery and treatment. And as if their health challenges weren't enough, they too often find themselves battling a stubborn bureaucracy, a flawed implementation of Law 26/1991 for out-of-region services. Many find themselves with doors slammed in their faces, so they forgo the reimbursements they're entitled to. They pay for "trips of hope" for themselves and their companions out of their own pockets, perhaps thanks to all the family members who contribute. Otherwise, the costs are unsustainable." Francesca Dettori, spokesperson for the Franco Monagheddu Right to Health Association, fights daily to help Sardinian patients who emigrate to the North for surgery, hospitalization, and now also for specialist outpatient care. He says: «People must be well cared for here, but once they leave, due to the "inadequacy and untimeliness" of the care on the island, then they should be supported , as the law requires, and not given interpretations, which also vary from local health authority to local health authority, which set limits and deny them».
This "passive mobility" affects over 14,000 Sardinians and weighs heavily on the regional coffers: for hospitalizations alone, the latest Agenas data (from 2023) reports a negative imbalance of 56,999,718, with a flight rate exceeding 8%. The previous year, it was 50.2 million, in 2021, 40.9 million, in 2020, 34.8 million (but these are the years of Covid, and there has been a notable slowdown), in 2019, 55 million, and in 2018, 53 million.
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