Waiting lists: the decree to cut them with exams on the weekend

A decree and a bill have been passed by the government to try to remedy the problem of increasingly long waiting lists in the national health service. If visits and analyzes are not available within the corresponding priority times indicated, the local health authorities must guarantee them in an alternative way: in accredited private facilities or through freelancers who work within the hospital at the price of the ticket. The clinics may be open on weekends: Saturday and Sunday.

The decree provides for the establishment, at the National Agency for Health Services, of the National Waiting List Platform, interoperable with the list platforms of each region and autonomous province, in line with the objective «Strengthening the Transparency Portal» envisaged by the PNRR. There will also be a data collection platform and a verification and control body to ensure that legal obligations are observed.

Convergence to the single regional or intra-regional reservation center for providers is expected accredited private, hospital and outpatient clinics. Public CUPs and private booking centers will be able to stipulate contractual agreements between regions and private healthcare facilities for the provision of the relevant services in the area.

Healthcare and hospital companies will be prohibited from suspending or closing booking activities relating to essential levels of assistance and the penalties for suspending or closing booking activities will be doubled. Taxation on doctors’ overtime is lowered in order to allow diagnostic and specialist visits to be carried out even on Saturdays and Sundays with extended hours.

Regions and autonomous provinces will be able to increase the spending limit for the purposes of eliminating waiting lists and allocating additional resources to integrative bargaining to enhance the professionalism of healthcare managers and operators in the nursing, midwifery, technical, rehabilitation and prevention professions. There are exemptions to use internal outpatient specialists already on permanent duty and increase the hourly wages of additional medical staff services. Specializing doctors will be able, on a voluntary basis and outside the training period, to take on freelance roles for the emergency services of the National Health Service, for a period of 12 hours per week.

The Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci explained to Corriere della Sera that “citizens will be able to obtain visits and diagnostic tests within the established times based on urgency”. «This time there will be stringent controls. We will reward the general and health directors of companies who guarantee efficiency and we will sanction negligence. And we have obtained, for 2024, an increase in the spending ceiling for hiring from 10 to 15% and, from 2025, its abolition.”

The opposition speaks of an exclusively electoral move that has no economic backing. «Five days after the vote, the government presents a rubbish decree that doesn’t put even a single euro into healthcare. If you want to eliminate waiting lists, vote for the law we have submitted to parliament to provide resources and unblock hiring in public health. It’s not just me or the Democratic Party that says it, the right-wing regions and the experts say it that it’s a fluff decree with measures already foreseen in it and without adding an extra euro. Indeed, we try to facilitate the private sector. We need resources on public health and the unblocking of hiring, because if the departments are emptied the waiting lists will grow indefinitely” said the leader of the Democratic Party Elly Schlein.