“It’s not the quality of healthcare that counts, but the quantity of favors you are willing to do”
In electoral campaigns, one of the categories that is most mobilized is that which has to do with healthcare. You see managers who improvise as meeting organizers, doctors, aspiring head doctors who transform into errand boys. You have no idea what was unleashed, for example, during the last European elections in support of the regional government political forces.
Sicilian healthcare is occupied militarily by politics, the merit almost always goes to waste and the belonging and availability of women and men of the category to do favors for their member of parliament or councilor of reference count much more than the preparation and acquired skills. Every time the managers called to lead our hospital structures are chosen, a clear illegality is committed, now legalized by practice: a crude division between the parties and within the parties between the currents to place someone who is openly a friend. More than the quality of healthcare services, what matters more is the quantity of favors one is willing to do to climb the rankings. And be ready for the next round. It is difficult to find a healthcare manager who is not sold to politics, I invite anyone who feels upset by this statement of mine to sue me, very willing to face a judgment and to demonstrate to anyone who feels offended what jacket you are wearing and for what
Many are recycled, from legislature to legislature, from party to party, even different, even alternative, as long as one remains in one’s place without interruption. Of course, it is mainly due to this sick mix that healthcare in Sicily does not work. The managers always remain in their place even when the emergency rooms are not working, the waiting lists are getting longer, the costs are growing, the staff is decreasing, all this doesn’t matter, what matters is whether you have satisfied the electoral needs of the relevant politicians.
There are many ASPs and hospital facilities because politics needs many seats to satisfy all parties, it doesn’t matter if perhaps merging them, making everything simpler, could make our healthcare work better, it matters more to multiply the seats. Splitting up procurement centers increases costs, but encourages illegality and clientele. Each hospital structure, sometimes even individual departments within the same structure, use different operating systems. How many times have you sat in front of a doctor and asked you for your health information, even after a few hours. How many x-rays have you had, perhaps available in other hospitals, the electronic file is unknown, the use that should be made of the health card is unknown. How many times are the doctors who should be in the departments clearing out the waiting lists forced to stay in the emergency room because there is a lack of staff? Have you asked a manager if he has ever held a meeting with the local structures that are located in the same area as the structure he manages, to coordinate the work, to clear up the queues in the emergency rooms? Many of them don’t even know where the nearest medical service is, the pharmacy, the pediatrician, the general practitioner is.
Everyone works on their own, without any coordination, costs rise, and inefficiency grows.
But when it comes to giving grades and making report cards, they all pass.
Promotions are directly proportional to the level of inefficiency of our healthcare system. Doctor Spampinato is right, who will certainly be penalized by regional politics for the courageous words expressed after the case of the fracture immobilized with cardboard in the Patti hospital: “Instead of inspectors in the emergency rooms, let inspectors be sent to the department to look not for the ‘cardboard,’ but the papers that demonstrate how Patti’s emergency room does not comply with the law. And doctors cannot always be the scapegoats.” Healthcare in Sicily is collapsing, and the citizens have noticed this because they frequent the departments, and the emergency rooms, and book visits. They don’t have preferential lanes. Regional politics has other parameters to evaluate the quality of our healthcare system, light years away from that of the Sicilians.
On. Davide Faraone
Source: Butt.ma Sicilia – Il giornale dell’irriverenza