Medical assistance in the area guaranteed 16 hours a day and night service entrusted to the 24. This is one of the innovations provided for by the supplementary document of the guideline for the renewal of agreements with family doctors and paediatricians, licensed by the Health Commission of the Regions . The objective of the document is the "review and reorganization of the assistance and access to services processes through the coordination of the activities of the contracted doctors and other health professionals".
The policy act, approved in 2014 and now integrated, is based on the review and reorganization of assistance and access to services through the coordination of the activity of contracted doctors and other health professionals. For this purpose, it envisages the creation of territorial functional aggregations (Aft), articulated on a maximum catchment area of 30 thousand inhabitants but "without cost increases", with the aim of guaranteeing continuity of assistance and, ultimately, lightening the load of hospitals.
The Aft will bring together primary care doctors, pediatricians of free choice and outpatient specialists and will provide assistance from 8 to 20 on weekdays, plus another 4 hours until 24 which will be guaranteed by the doctors defined on an hourly basis, i.e. 16pm, whereas initially it was to be throughout the 24 hours. The emergency-urgency will take over to cover the other times.
After a long gestation we are now closer to the finish line: "This will mean - explains Massimo Cozza, secretary of Fp CGIL Medici - the possibility of finally reopening, after years of blockage, the negotiations between Sisac and the unions for the renewal of the agreements, which they will be able to redefine the roles and functions of the contracted doctors, also as regards the economic aspects".
Without prejudice to the no from the Italian Doctors Union: according to the secretary Pina Onotri, the 16h is "a system that has never been tested", which "will produce improper use of the 118 at night, clogging of the emergency room, cuts to the emergency medical service, with loss of Work".
