MILAN (ITALPRESS) – One problem of Lombardy’s accredited private healthcare is “the shortage of staff” because “compared to a rise in the average age, thus an increase in physiological demand for healthcare services, the number of healthcare workers who can deliver them — doctors, nurses, social and health workers — has not grown at the same rate, but rather has decreased compared to a few years ago.” This was said by Michele Nicchio, president of Aiop Lombardia, the Italian Private Hospital Association, interviewed by Agenzia Italpress. “Solution? Difficult. To make a doctor takes six years, to make a specialist another five or six. It’s not like the under-scheduling that lasted a few dozen years can be solved in a few years,” he added. Another problem, according to the president of Aiop Lombardy, is that “there are fewer young people. If we look at those enrolled in nursing, they are actually fewer. And this is a problem that is difficult to solve, if not by going to find professionals abroad, where, however, the same training courses must be guaranteed with the same quality from the professional point of view that can be found in Italy.” “The excellence of the Lombardy system in terms of the quality of the service provided, that is, in clinical terms, has not waned, in fact it has been growing in recent years,” Nicchio added. “Undoubtedly from Covid onward a series of problems, which were to be solved probably lay dormant for a little too long, have now accumulated and have created a series of problems on which we are actually playing catch-up a little bit. “I would like to be able to do health culture, and better explain to people, to the population and to everybody, how the private accredited system works, because so many times in discussions I feel like there is a lot of demagoguery. One hears people talk about the private as if to say that services are paid for, that something is taken away from public facilities,” Nicchio concluded. “One fundamental thing is to remind citizens that Mr. Mario Rossi who goes to the public facility or the accredited private one finds the same service with the same controls by the bodies, paying the same amount, that is 0, or possibly, in case there is, the co-pay. From this point of view it does not change to the citizen, but many do not know that.”(ITALPRESS).
Photo: Italpress
