FIMMG Congress, Scotti: The risk? 15 million without a doctor in 2026 and abandonment of the suburbs
Publication date : 05/10/2017 – Fimmg Source Adnkronos
The future of assistance in the area, which has always been heralded as the cornerstone of a healthcare capable of giving concrete answers to citizens, risks being bleak. «The danger is that primary care can be concentrated only in the metropolis, with the abandonment of the suburbs and small towns. The numbers speak for themselves. In 2026 there could be 15 million Italians without a family doctor 
due to the lack of general practitioners, who have not been trained in sufficient numbers to cope with the generational turnover".
This was explained by Silvestro Scotti who yesterday in his report to the 74th FIMMG National Congress dedicated ample space to the theme, central to the profession and transversal to the other points of the report. Like demographic change and the 'tsunamì of chronicity, in which taking charge of patients locally is fundamental, in terms of health but also in terms of economy. Just as it is important to guarantee generational turnover for other issues that are even more trade unionist. «The new agreement – Scotti told Adnkronos Salute – will probably be very effective.
But we risk not having the men to apply it». Someone thinks, adds Scotti, "that the management of primary care for 15,000,000 Italians can be solved by centralizing the offer. 
Nothing more fake. It would be enough to consider that the metropolitan areas of 14 Italian cities alone welcome 21,000,000 citizens in just over 10% of the surface of the Italian territory to understand that in the remaining 90% (270,000 km2) the remaining half of Italian citizens will not have territorial health references, having already today a welfare offer with distant and not easily accessible structures».
«Not understanding that that family doctor of that village, of those citizens, of those elderly people, of those sick people is an indispensable health care unit, means, as already mentioned, pursuing the disappearance of the National Health Service. Let's be clearer, let's give the numbers if we aren't already giving them: is a family doctor every 90 square kilometers an offer of primary care? With the minimum numbers envisaged, creating an AFT (territorial functional aggregations, single-professional organizational forms of family medicine) every 900 sq km is an offer of primary care?», he asks.
«If we then consider in similar territories at least 2 Aft converging in a complex primary care unit (Uccp, multi-professional aggregation), we are talking about greater than or equal to the surface area of the 40% of the Italian provinces. We are talking about the future but, to be honest and thinking in terms of programming, the problem is already present», he concluded.
Related news: Report by the National Secretary General Silvestro Scotti
