“It is now a fact: the shortage of doctors and nurses risks undermining the territorial health reform implemented with the Pnrr and decree 77/2022 and also creates serious problems for hospital care, especially as regards the “emergency-urgency, but not only. And the current organization of the National Health Service, with its funding and its rules, is not enough to solve the problem that affects citizens’ assistance in the short term”. For this reason, the federations of medical associations (Fnomceo), of the nursing professions (Fnopi) and of health and social health cooperatives represented by Confcooperative Sanità have set up a joint working group “to address the issue of shortage, with the development of medical and nursing also through the cooperative tool”.
The agreement, formalized today – explains a note – immediately distances itself from the methods of hiring medical and nursing staff with methods that favor speculative practices to the detriment of the NHS, without programming, with negative impacts on patients, professionals, operators individuals and on the system as a whole, and also sets itself the objective of supervising the rules which distinguish the contracting of services from the provision of personnel in order to avoid recourse to tender procedures at the lowest price, applying the contractual minimums set out in the contracts signed by the most representative social partners at national level. This is to protect the professionals, the cooperation between them, but above all the assisted, to preserve quality, availability, methods of engagement of the operators and timeliness of the services.
Confcooperative Sanità, Fnomceo and Fnopi will develop shared proposals, including regulations, to contribute to the solution of the lack of health professionals, especially in the area (home, day centres, residences, etc.) following 4 guidelines: the valorisation of the freelance activity; the review of the current exclusivity restrictions with the NHS; the development of aggregations and organizations of cooperative operators; the definition of new health professional help and support, in particular for nursing staff. Not forgetting – they specify – the need to support, recognize and implement training courses to enhance the professions involved in assistance in the area, including collaborations with the business world and with the related representative associations.
Confcooperative Sanità, since 2010 – recalls the note – has created an integrated multi-professional model to network the know-how and professionalism involved in assistance (over one million professionals in all). “The traditional organizational model is now ineffective in responding to the health needs of the population – underlines Barbara Mangiacavalli, president of Fnopi – The new health paradigm is based on the construction of networks of territorial proximity, resulting in a shift of care settings from traditional places of care, such as hospitals, towards more sustainable and accessible territorial structures that can promote social-health integration and continuity of pathways.The overall assistance must be characterized by the multi-professionalism and interdisciplinarity of the assistance activities and this agreement is a tool, proposed by those who are at the forefront of assistance, which politics and institutions cannot ignore”.
“The agreement signed today – says Filippo Anelli, president of Fnomceo – aims to address the shortage of professionals, in the hospital and in the area, through the development of innovative, flexible, non-profit, sustainable and subsidiary organizational models for the benefit of citizens. Models that avoid distortions such as, for example, tenders with maximum discounts or methods that favor speculative practices. The instrument is feasible, but we must establish rules”.
“A clear distance from improper forms of engagement of medical and nursing staff in the NHS, the integrated enhancement of the work of doctors, nurses and other health professionals through the cooperative model and a shared reflection on the front of personnel shortage : with the alliance signed today on these three points – declares Giuseppe Milanese, president of Confcooperative Sanità – we intend to make a concrete contribution in a moment of distress, but also of profound innovation, of our social and health welfare system. like ours who decide to work together to propose concerted solutions can only be good news for the professionals we represent, for the NHS and, above all, for the people we assist”.