Marche: 13,2 million euros to carry out over 160 thousand more services. The 2024 regional operational plan is ready to reduce waiting lists.

"For 2024 we are allocating 13.260.000 euros for the recovery and improvement of waiting lists: the goal is to achieve over 160 thousand more services“. This was announced by the vice-president of the council and councilor for health of the Marche region, Filippo Saltamartini, during a press conference that took place today in the region, at Palazzo Raffaello, to present the 2024 Regional Operational Plan to reduce waiting lists .

Also present were the undersecretary to the presidency of the regional council, Aldo Salvi, the director of the regional health department, Antonio Draisci, and the director ofRegional health agency (Ars) of the Marche, Flavia Carle, who illustrated the technical and organizational aspects of the measure.

This is 0,4% of the indistinct financing of the standard national healthcare requirement to which the State contributes for the year 2024, intended to outpatient services, hospitalizations and screening. In this context, the Operational Plan established by the Region provides for 160.402 outpatient services and 3.151 hospitalizations to be precise.

The objectives are: to respect the delivery times based on the prescribed priority of all the services provided for by the National Plan for the Government of Waiting Lists (PNGLA – 90% on time) and recover the services not provided due to the pandemic emergency. 8,6 million will be used to carry out specialist outpatient and diagnostic services, the remaining 4,6 million are intended for surgical interventions.

“In 2023 the resources amounted to 9 million euros – the councilor recalled – and they were completely spent: we managed to recover for the outpatient 128.374 services compared to the 58.991 expected in the Dgr of the previous Recovery Plan; there were 2.768 hospitalizations recovered and 12.016 screenings. This year, with greater resources available, the authorities, with the support of the private sector when necessary, will have the opportunity to do more".

The Regional Health Agency, in addition to the six-monthly monitoring required by the Ministry, provides monthly monitoring to carry out any corrective actions. To achieve the objectives, periodic meetings will be held with the local representatives for the Waiting Lists of Regional Health Service Bodies (SSR) and with the General Managers, a verification of the application, reservations and acceptances on a daily basis; monthly monitoring of PNGLA performances ex-post (analysis of services provided on time) and ex-ante (analysis of bookings made on time).

Among the optimization activities envisaged there is a reorganization of booking diaries, monitoring of prescriptive appropriateness with reconstitution and convening of the Regional Body for Prescriptive Appropriateness (ORA), the recognition of patient care pathways within Care Paths for specific pathologies (neoplasms and chronic pathologies) with the aim of optimizing the booking system directly by the Specialist.  

The vice president, in a passage of his speech, was keen to underline that thanks to the 2024 Regional Operational Plan, the data from the waiting lists from now on "will be available every day" and that the monitoring system introduced will allow " measure performance in terms of volume and number of services provided". 

"Performance will also increase thanks to new technologies - he explained - just yesterday (4 April, ed.) we inaugurated a new magnetic resonance imaging machine at the Fano hospital: the PNRR is bearing fruit".

Finally, Saltamartini recalled the agreement made with general practitioners, the activation of service pharmacies and the opening of Health Points, measures which aim to reduce the pressure on hospital structures and bring healthcare ever closer to citizens, then he underlined the Region's commitment to overcome the shortage of doctors, explaining that thanks to the university training plan for healthcare personnel "from 2026 we will have more doctors" compared to the turnover linked to retirements.