‘Don’t frustrate our willingness to do swabs’: family doctors write to the Region

The doctor. Ravizza, president of the Order of Lecco

The Regional Federation of Lombardy Orders is the spokesperson for the serious inconveniences of family doctors.
In addition to the shortage of professionals, which has worsened in recent months after retirements, due to the lack of trained doctors and the difficulty even in finding temporary replacements without postgraduate training, the category suffers from a shortage of administrative staff and nurses. All this is the result of years of disinvestment in health in general and in the specific sector.
This dramatic situation, already represented several times in the Region by Fromceo also in recent months, seems to find no attention in a reality where interest seems more focused on media defenses than on content and problem solving. Likewise, Fromceo had requested a strengthening of the entire territorial health system, the DIPS, the RSA.
This situation is superimposed on the burden of patients with chronic diseases, who can no longer schedule follow-ups in hospitals, and the confusion arising from the complex system of requesting swabs and returning results and reporting cases and contacts. with the relative difficulties in the operation of the regional computer systems.
Right now, the routine and emergency workload is compounded by the commitment to the vaccination campaign, the logistics and planning of which are undermined by intolerable delays in the supply of vaccines by the Region.
Despite the difficulties mentioned above, family physicians have offered to assist in performing rapid antigen tests and ask that their availability not be hampered by inefficient management. Most family doctors’ offices do not have and cannot assume the appropriate characteristics to guarantee the safe execution of tampons, which is still a high-risk maneuver, requiring full protection, distancing, sanitation.
It is necessary for the Lombardy Region to make available structures outside the studies, where family doctors can collaborate with community nurses, administrative staff and Civil Protection, to manage an adequate flow of people, clearly selecting which citizens They must belong to the service.
It will be necessary to involve not only family doctors, but also care continuity doctors and the entire primary care area, respecting the different professional realities and thus also protecting colleagues in conditions of greater risk due to age and health conditions .
The Lombardy Region, beyond the effective statements of the media, which run the risk of generating unrealistic expectations in the citizens, must implement a true governance of territorial medicine, in collaboration with the Orders and with commercial organizations.

The doctors are there: we ask the Region to be there, indeed, by our side, for our people.