The Covid effect is progressively slowing down and the NHS in 2022 recovered the levels of benefits provided in 2019, but people who need visits to reach a diagnosis or to check previous pathologies or conditions are increasingly behind. And Istat certifies that the wallet is being used more and more to overcome waiting lists: those who paid entirely at their own expense for both specialist visits (from 37% in 2019 to 41.8% in 2022) and diagnostic tests ( from 23% to 27.6% in 2022).
Compared to the pre-Covid year, there are still almost 3.4 million first visits (-15.5%) to reach the approximately 22 million in 2019 and over 5.5 million follow-up visits (-17%) to equal the over 32.5 million also in 2019. This is shown by the data published by Agenas, processed by the Salutequità Observatory, which therefore highlights how still missing in the appeal in 2022 compared to 2019 about one specialist outpatient service out of 10 , excluding laboratory tests, nationwide.
“It is serious and worrying that in 2022 the NHS’s ability to take charge of citizens’ health needs is still lower than pre-pandemic – comments Tonino Aceti, president of Salutequità – In fact, all this happens in the face of about 1 billion allocated between 2020 and 2022 by the State precisely for the recovery of waiting lists, but for a large part not yet spent by the Regions, while citizens are forced to put more and more hands on their wallets to get treatment. expected through the use of the public resources allocated, even with the latest Budget Law, must become the central element of measurement and evaluation for the purposes of the Lea of the work of the Regions – he underlines – To date, however, this practically still does not happen “. (continued)