BOLZANO. Healthcare, news in sight for citizens. From Monday 30 December the commitments will last 6 months instead of 12: specialist visits must be booked in this period of time, then the commitments will expire. Also on 30 December, the new essential levels of assistance (LEA) for outpatient specialists come into force, including new tariffs and free services. Also new for canceling an appointment. From January 2 days will be enough: if the visit is on Monday, it must be canceled by midnight on Friday.
Commitments last 6 months
New features for more efficient management of waiting lists. All services prescribed from Monday 30 December 2024 must be booked within 180 days (6 months). Then the request will no longer be valid. Services prescribed before 30 December 2024 remain valid until 30 December 2025. The validity of prescriptions for medicines remains unchanged (30 days). A change deemed necessary by the department and the local health authority to prevent citizens from asking their GP for a referral, sometimes even a priority one, and then leaving it in the drawer. The ASL must guarantee the priority visit within 10 days, the deferrable visit within 30 days, the scheduled visit within 120 days, but the citizen who requested it must also book it.
New LEAs and new tariffs
As mentioned, the new Lea (Essential Levels of Assistance) will also come into effect on 30 December with the new provincial tariffs. The list includes 2,000 services, including all specialist services, diagnostic and laboratory tests. “The transition from the previous to the new price list is automatic and patients will not have to take any further actions.” Some treatments become free.
Free assisted reproduction
Giuliano Piccoliori – scientific director of the Institute of General Medicine and Public Health in Bolzano and family doctor in Val Gardena – says that among the new LEAs we find services that previously the patient had to pay for and which now must be guaranteed. «Free treatment therefore for endometriosis and for medically assisted procreation, in this case the turning point is epochal. Free hadrontherapy (a particular form of radiotherapy used for the treatment of some types of tumors), free laboratory tests for the diagnosis and monitoring of rare diseases as well as photodynamic laser therapy with verteporfin which is used in ophthalmology.” From Monday 30 December – continues the doctor – the indications for prescribing the first visit and check-up visit for chronic patients with exemption will change. «In the case of a chronic patient, exempt due to pathology, an initial visit is prescribed, when necessary to evaluate a new clinical problem, not related to the pathology for which the patient is exempt. For example diabetes. However, a specialist check-up is prescribed when the patient, exempt due to a pathology or rare disease, develops any flare-ups of the same or a new health problem linked to the disease, even if he or she is accessing a specialist facility and/or discipline for the first time. different from the reference one”.
Rapid cancellations from January
The Province – with a resolution by councilor Hubert Messner – has simplified the lives of citizens dealing with cancellations of specialist visits and diagnostic tests. From January to cancel an appointment it will be enough to do it two days in advance: if the visit is on Monday, it must be canceled by midnight on Friday. Today the same visit booked on Monday must be canceled by Wednesday of the previous week and this is because two working days must pass between the visit and cancellation (Saturday and Sunday are not considered). Let’s remember that 270 thousand South Tyroleans remember to cancel visits a year – out of over two million specialist services booked (2,134,000) – but there are those who continue to forget or do it late and pay the fine. The fines, introduced in January 2019, last year totaled more than 22 thousand.