by Claudio Figaia
the MASS
"Less exams, please, and less prescriptions". The local health authority puts pressure on family doctors to reduce health care costs. And, in return, it promises incentives to the "basic" healthcare providers themselves: you make the company save again and the company rewards you (in cash).
The expenditure for diagnostic and laboratory services carried out at the request of family doctors is in line - indeed a little better, as noted by the 2012 Mes report of the Sant'Anna Institute of Pisa - with the standards defined by the Tuscany Region.
But stay high; just as very high, the highest in Tuscany this time, is the overall per capita health cost of the Apuan Local Health Authority: 1,923 euros, against a regional average of 1,896 euros.
It is therefore necessary to cut, and the ASL management has begun to be a lighthouse for some time. Also because, in addition to the rationalization of costs imposed on the entire Tuscan health system, it has to deal with the "accursed" issue of the maxi hole of 240 million which has long since put the Apuan health system behind the blackboard of the "bad guys".
Hence the launch of a package of measures that has just been defined by the company management of the ASL in recent days. The one for the reduction of exams has as its objective the 5% cut of the total number of laboratory and diagnostic imaging exams corresponding to an economic valuation of 800 thousand cures per year.
How to achieve this savings? The strategy of the ASL is to share the criteria of appropriateness for laboratory and diagnostic tests with family doctors, also through the dissemination of a list of tests that could often be avoided because they are not strictly essential in relation to the pathology. , either because they are now outdated, or because they are redundant. In other words, pressure on doctors to order only tests that are "really" useful for diagnosis and treatment
