Sardinian healthcare in red code: lack of beds, hundreds of operations postponed
Orthopedics in collapse, doctors' unions protest: "Care increasingly precarious". Staff agitation creates chaos in hospitalsPer restare aggiornato entra nel nostro canale Whatsapp
In the greater Cagliari area, Traumatology has lost twenty beds in four years , going from 108 to 88. But the potential admissions that the hospitals in the area are able to guarantee in orthopedic care are 33 percent less than the minimum standards required by national legislation. In fact: the ministerial decree 70 of 2015, in the capital and surrounding areas assigns 132 beds to the medical specialty. Which have never found space.
The merciless photograph was taken by the Cimo union, through Emanuele Cabras, orthopedic doctor and surgeon at Brotzu and company representative. "We wonder - underlines the doctor-unionist - how it is possible to continue working in these conditions. Without providing for an increase in beds in Orthopedics, the Lea, the essential levels of assistance, cannot be guaranteed".
The situation worsened with the pandemic . Until 2020, the 108 beds that existed in the greater Cagliari area were divided between Brotzu, Marino and Santissima Trinità. With the opening of the Covid hospitals, including the Poetto hospital itself converted into a facility dedicated to treating the virus, there was a collapse in healthcare provision. "To which is added - concluded Cabras - the crisis of the operating units of the neighboring provinces, in particular Sulcis, Lanusei, Nuoro and Oristano". The situation has become truly explosive. But Sardinian healthcare also has to deal with the dozens and dozens of surgical interventions that continue to be cancelled , at Brotzu, Businco and the Policlinico di Monserrato. The state of agitation of the doctors (with the stop to additional services and overtime), which has been going on for three weeks at Arnas and for seven days at Aou of Cagliari - is causing many hours of operating rooms to be cancelled in the most important hospitals, which support the load of patients not only of the city and the wider area, but of half of Sardinia.
" We are in an emergency situation ," explains Marco Desogus, a union representative for the Aaroi anesthetists at the University Hospital Trust, "in this first week of mobilization, what was planned has been more or less completed, even if there has been no compensation for absent colleagues, but all the Day Surgery operations have already been cancelled, and next week we will see an overall drop of over 25%. Obviously, emergencies and tumors are guaranteed, but everything that can be postponed will have to wait a little longer."
Today the unions will be at the prefect's for the cooling procedure. "The Aou has opened a dispute like that of Arnas and since October 17 has proclaimed a state of agitation", says Susanna Montaldo, regional secretary of Anaao, "we ask for an equalization of salaries with those of other health companies: our funds for assignments, discomfort and results are clearly lower than those of our colleagues".