Waiting times among the highest in Italy: in Sardinia patients fleeing emergency rooms

In Sardinia there were 185,422 accesses to the emergency room in one year. Treatment times? The highest in Italy for intermediate gravity codes (green and yellow). And one in four patients leaves before the medical visit, or during investigations or before the medical record is closed. An impressive percentage (24.31%) if compared with those recorded in the other regions: the second to deal with the problem is Sicily, which stops at 12.71%.

For the island, no comforting picture emerges from the "National survey on the state of implementation of time-dependent networks" by Agenas (National Agency for Regional Health Services) presented today. A 643-page dossier that analyzes the state of health of healthcare sectors which, to function well, must have short response times compared to patients' needs.

A large chapter is dedicated to the emergency-urgency system, therefore to the emergency rooms. And the word "Sardinia" often appears at the bottom of the tables indicating the ranking of the territories.

Those that indicate abandonment of care are red alert data: the national average of those leaving emergency rooms before the visit stands at 6.29%. On the island, out of just over 185 thousand registered patients, 45,088 left before diagnosis. Again: if the white codes are taken care of and treated in around 80 minutes (below the national trend, with 111), the timing for the green ones rises to 184 minutes (on average) and flies to 298 for the yellow ones (worse only in Sicily and Friuli Venezia Giulia).

More generally «the proportion of heart attacks treated within 90 minutes appears very low, probably (a phenomenon, ed. ) attributable to travel times. In particular, it is suggested to strengthen the areas of Sassari, Oristano and Carbonia-Iglesias, while the areas of Cagliari and Nuoro are acceptable", writes Agenas.

On the emergency-urgency network, the document explains that «the percentage of patient admissions from the emergency room out of the total number of admissions is below the national average. However", it is underlined, "the percentage of hospitalizations out of the total admissions is clearly high, above the average with hospitalizations also for minor codes. The percentage of abandonment of the emergency room" however, "is very high, with a high average length of stay for intermediate severity codes". Going into detail, timing is a problem «for the ASL of Carbonia Iglesias and Cagliari for the white codes, for the green and yellow codes for the ASL of Medio Campidano, for the red codes for the ASL of Carbonia Iglesias and Olbia» .