BOLZANO. «Health cannot be in the queue. We will break down the waiting lists, I certainly can’t do it in one day and I can’t do it alone. But I will.” The Health Councilor Hubert Messner he spoke like this a year ago a few days after his inauguration. It’s time to summarize what has happened in recent months. «My budget? Positive. A certain serenity seems to have returned to the ASL. Both among leaders and in hospitals. Family doctors are less satisfied, but we continue with the meetings.”
Councilor, the waits for specialist visits and diagnostic tests continue to create problems for the population which clogs up the emergency room service in hospitals (South Tyrol records 700 visits per day). Did you reduce them?
Yes I did. We have set up two task forces with this task. A corporate one, established by resolution in the summer, to which the ministry added the Central Health Care Management Unit. We have activated continuous monitoring of expectations and we meet every month to take stock. Pierpaolo Bertoli has been appointed sole manager for list management. Thanks to this system and continuous monitoring, I can say that I have cut down on time, but there are still problems with priority visits (to be guaranteed to the patient within ten days). We manage to guarantee the times, but they are too many in terms of numbers, we must work more on the appropriateness of the prescriptions to avoid useless tests, I am thinking for example of the request for more than 30 thousand MRI scans per year. We have decided on important contributions dedicated to family doctors for the purchase of diagnostic tools, given that many tests can be done in their clinics. Another thing. For the first time, the Local Health Authority has started meetings with the head officials in December 2024 to close the negotiations on the budget objectives by January. We asked them to increase the number of visits, while continuing to guarantee quality. We are doing a lot.
You fight against useless exams, do you get out of it?
We have to do it. The new president of the Medical Association, Astrid Marsoner, says that collaboration is needed between family doctors (be careful though, they are not the only ones who prescribe visits and tests) and hospital doctors. I agree. A sort of direct line needs to be created, I want to discuss the issue with the head doctors to ensure that at certain times there is a specialist in each department who – if called upon – answers the phone on various issues.
Hospital and Community House in Bolzano? Where are we with the realization?
Here we are playing for the future but we are a little late, given that they should be ready, according to the dictates of the Pnrr (which partly finances them), by 2026. We need to get moving. The two new facilities will be built in the immediate vicinity of the hospital, next to Pavilion W and there have been problems “coupling” them to the new clinic. They will be fundamental to allow us to follow chronic patients and not clog up the emergency department and the hospital, which remains for acute care. We need to discuss further with family doctors to understand how to integrate them within them. At the moment we are okay with Laives, Chiusa and Naturno. However, all the Territorial Operations Centers (COT) have left. I remember that we continued with the renovation of the San Maurizio hospital wards and that we expanded the San Candido hospital (new operating rooms). We are carrying out renovations and expansions of several districts.
Other strategies to relieve emergency rooms and hospitals?
Yes, certainly. We are training staff to start the Operations Center which will respond to the harmonized European number 116-117. This is a new telephone service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which will guarantee all citizens answers to requests for non-urgent medical care. We have 52 primaries out of 120 who have to re-run the competition after the Constitutional Court declared the commission that nominated them illegitimate.
How’s it going?
Very good. We continue with two competitions a week. The procedure began in November 2024 and I hope to complete everything within nine months, also because we also have to replace the retired head doctors. I have always been against keeping “acting officers” running the departments for a long time. Another hot issue is that of information systems. Marsoner also says that the electronic health record does not work as it should, despite its promises. A week passes before seeing the laboratory tests and the family doctors are still unable to see the specialist reports.
What are the solutions?
I have been hearing about computerization for perhaps 15/20 years. In recent months we have made great strides in digitalisation thanks to the electronic health record which remains a central access point to all citizens’ health data, which we are perfecting. We have also created a single IT system already operational in the hospitals of Bolzano and Merano, to be extended soon to Bressanone and Brunico. The situation is improving.
Bolzano has its own Faculty of Medicine, how are the first months going?
University has started, a nice breath of fresh air. We have 60 students, almost half with scholarships from the Province, with the obligation to serve in Alto Adige for 4 years within the first ten years of graduation. Cattolica has asked us to be able to train more than 60 students a year, but I cannot burden hospital colleagues because I want the quality of our training to be high.
The shortage of both medical and nursing staff remains important, what progress have you made?
The problem remains, but we are not left idle. To stem the shortage of doctors, we have extended specialist training according to the “Austrian model” in South Tyrolean hospitals, which currently has more than 200 specialists. Special training in General Medicine has also started (30 places for 2025-2028) with a scholarship of 3,500 euros per month (with bilingualism and obligation to serve in Alto Adige after graduation). We have increased the salary for clinical internships for doctors in training from 450 to 900 euros gross per month. Negotiations have also begun with Rome to simplify the recognition of qualifications obtained abroad.
What about healthcare professions?
We have increased the internship allowance for all Claudiana students to 7 euros per hour while for nursing students, the allowance has risen to 15 euros per hour. We have introduced a scholarship of 3,500 euros per year for students attending health professions (always with bilingualism and the obligation to serve in South Tyrol after graduation). The constant recruitment of staff remains active and we have created the one-stop shop for the hiring of ASL staff (“one-stop-shop”). We are not sitting idle.