Chronic diseases, the national plan in the State-Regions Conference

SNAMI: the Minister comes down from the moon. A minister who doesn't like confrontation continues to collect flops!

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Minister Lorenzin sent the text for final approval. Among the main points, integration between primary and specialist care, continuous care, early care, strengthening of home care and de-hospitalization.

Of Aboutpharma Online editorial staff – 22 luglio 2016 – Aboutpharma

The National Chronicity Plan arrives on the table of the State-Regions Conference for the definitive ok. This was announced by the Ministry of Health in a statement, explaining that the minister, Beatrice Lorenzin, has already sent the document which – in implementation of the 2014-2016 Health Pact – governs the management of chronic diseases within the National Health Service.

The Plan, explains the ministry, defines at national level a "strategic design for the management of chronicity that the individual regions will be able to implement on their territory in consideration of their own history, services and available resources". Then, it dictates guidelines on "diseases with specific characteristics and care needs, such as chronic kidney disease and renal failure, rheumatoid arthritis and chronic arthritis in developmental age, ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, heart failure, Parkinson's disease and parkinsonisms, bronchopneumopathy obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and respiratory insufficiency, respiratory insufficiency in developmental age, asthma in developmental age, endocrine diseases in developmental age and chronic kidney disease in developmental age".

In particular, the Plan provides indications to favor the functioning of the assistance networks, with a strong integration between primary assistance, centered on the general practitioner, and specialist care; continuity of care; the entry as early as possible of the person with chronic disease in the multidisciplinary diagnostic-therapeutic path; the strengthening of home care and the reduction of hospital admissions, also through the use of innovative technologies of "technoassistance"; the development of care models centered on the "global" needs of the patient and not just the clinical ones.

Prevention and improvement of the care path are among the main objectives indicated by the ministry to reduce "the clinical, social and economic burden" of the disease. Objectives to be pursued through "primary prevention, early diagnosis, patient education and empowerment, as well as through the prevention of complications, which are often responsible for the deterioration of the person's quality of life and which represent the main causes of high economic and social costs of the diseases themselves”.

Finally, the National Chronicity Plan would be "an important turning point" in the approach to the disease: "The person becomes the center of the care system, thanks to the construction of diagnostic-therapeutic pathways that place them in a care plan that is as personalized as possible ; the patient is therefore no longer a 'passive' user of the treatments, but actively collaborates in the management of his condition, reaching the point of defining a treatment path with the team that allows him to live with his pathological framework and to 'cope' with the pathology”, concludes the note from the ministry.

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Comunicato Ministero della Salute. Piano Nazionale della Cronicita’: il Ministro Lorenzin trasmette il documento in Conferenza Stato-Regioni per l’approvazione definitiva