“Italian healthcare goes on thanks to the work of doctors and nurses without whom everything stops. Even telemedicine is at risk if you don’t invest in healthcare personnel: I point out that, behind assistance via connected devices, monitoring of patients from remote and robotics, there are doctors, nurses, specialized personnel. This is why we need to invest again in human capital, as well as in structures. Only in this way will we be able to have a territorial assistance reform worthy of the name”. Like this Antonio Magi, general secretary of the Sumai-Assoprof union of outpatient specialists, on the sidelines of the presentation of the latest analyzes and proposals of the Non-Covid patient assistance permanent observatory. Focus on chronicity’, illustrated during a meeting with representatives of national politics and the main stakeholders of the National Health Service, carried out with the unconditional contribution of Ucb, Bristol Myers Squibb, Menarini Group, Sanofi and Beigene.
“Unfortunately – he underlines – in recent years we have not been able to maintain the normal turnover of doctors in the NHS due to poor ability to calculate the real need for doctors and transversal cuts in personnel. Result? The average age of Italian doctors and nurses is 58 We will soon have a scary pension bubble: not only will many retire, but our NHS is less and less attractive for doctors and nurses, who, not surprisingly, prefer to resign or go to work abroad”.
Hence “the need to change course – warns Magi – Either we try to make our NHS attractive again, or we will soon have empty structures, machinery stopped because there won’t be anyone who can make them work”.