Written by the editorial staff Newspaper.sm – Tuesday, September 11, 2012
It is recent news that the Italian Council of Ministers has formulated proposals to reorganize territorial and home health care, and it is probable that the attention or curiosity of some readers has been captured by headlines such as "medical assistance guaranteed 24 hours on 24", or "the House of Health open at night" or even "assistance 7 days a week", capable of arousing comments and stimulating comparisons.
I don't want to go into the merits of the economic feasibility or the implementation times on a large scale of this certainly commendable project, which has been in the making for years, and which has just begun to take shape with the first Health Homes and with the computerized networks tested only in some regions: instead I want to highlight that all the innovations that the Italian reformer pursues as a qualifying objective have already been present in our reality for years and constitute a tangible service used daily by citizens. Health assistance is guaranteed in absolute continuity by the Social Security Institute through personnel dedicated to the territory (the Doctor/Patient ratio is 1/1450 and Nurse/Patient 1/900) and through the activity of the Centers for Salute where the whole vast range of first-level services is provided from 8.00 to 18.00; the organization achieved guarantees for the remaining evening and night hours the prompt availability, for each Centre, of a regular or substitute Doctor who is always part of the team of the same Centre; the Centralized Emergency Medical Service completes the care pathway 24 hours on holidays and operates in the area by continuing to collect and enter health data into the computerized system, in full integration with the pathways and procedures involving the other Health Services. We can count on quality home nursing assistance, including the significant contribution of the San Marino Oncological Association, which with around 10,000 operations a year constitutes a safe and efficient barrier to hospital admissions. But the real excellence that allows and facilitates continuity of care in full Territorial-Hospital integration, the continuous passage of information between Operators, consultation between colleagues in real time is constituted by the computer network, of which the political and managerial will have for over 15 years equipped our Health System: yet for us it is an almost "old" conquest, so much so that it has to be modernized, already usual, so much so that the User seems oblivious to the times required for a reservation at the counter or for the collection of a report paper, yet so useful and interactive as to cancel the isolation of the Primary Care Doctor even when he works alone in a peripheral surgery. At the beginning of my professional career, I served in both public and private Italian healthcare, then I was conquered by the exemplary and absolutely innovative reality of the first Health Center in Ponte Mel
