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The investigation of the Republic on the prices of private laboratories. The Region: “Many workshops are improvised”
In Sicily the tampon business proliferates, without rules and with prices out of control in private laboratories. With ASPs in trouble, and increasing requests for tampons from schools and public and private healthcare companies also requiring them to perform diagnostic tests, a parallel testing market has emerged to find out if you have Covid. not legal, price: so much so that now the Region is ready to report illegal.
Throughout Sicily there are about thirty centers authorized by the Regional Health Department to make swabs, as they are equipped with molecular biology and adequate technology to analyze swabs in the same way as public facilities. These laboratories, which responded to a public notice from the council, apply the regional rate that established a limit price limit: 50 euros for tampons, 15 for fast tampons and three price ranges for isierologicals that go from € 32, 58 for type a, € 18.58 for type b and € 10 for type c.
But now there are dozens of other laboratories that, despite not having requested authorization from the Region and in the absence of verification of the requirements, continue to make swabs at uncontrolled prices, which in some cases reach 120 euros.
Repubblica verified the proposed prices for a buffer by various laboratories. For example, an analysis center in the Viale Strasburgo area asks for 70 euros for a swab. Another diagnostic center based in Palermo, but also sampling points in several countries of the province, performs swabs at a cost of 120 euros. And, again, another analysis center in the Viale Lazio area asks for 85 euros for a swab. A similar figure also requested by a well-known laboratory in the Calatafimi area, 85 euros, with a trick on the invoice where you insert a piece of 50 euros for the tampon, as required by the regional tariff, but then add another piece that makes the price : that is, “practical Covid management” at a cost of 37 euros.
Many laboratories, which have not adhered to the regional tender, propose to make swabs for coronavirus and then send them, for real analysis, to other centers even several kilometers away: a possibility not foreseen by the regional tender.
It is no coincidence that they are very concerned in the department. And the general director of the Epidemiological Observatory of the Letizia Di Liberti Region launches an appeal: “Please report these cases of high prices – she says – only then can we initiate the dispute. The email address to which you must report is [email protected]. First, individuals cannot set a higher price because the rate was specifically made to limit prices. And, above all, whoever makes the swab must be authorized by us, because we must assess whether the requirements exist. For example, many laboratories that do not have molecular biology perform the test and then send it to the Buccheri laboratory that has the appropriate technologies, so they raise their prices, to win. But they cannot. Currently, the commission is examining four other Sicilian laboratories to see if they have all the credentials to be authorized to make swabs. But there are centers that improvise without having asked for anything in the department ”.
According to Francesco Vitale, rector of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Palermo, “it is clear that a private laboratory that buys a commercial kit for a dosage that is perhaps made in small quantities has a lower discount than what can be obtained. of the great public laboratories that buy tens of thousands with public tenders ”.
The truth is that the demand for swabs is increasing and accredited laboratories are investing heavily in machinery for the analysis of coronavirus: “We have made a significant investment – says Luigi Zummo, sole director of Karol, a private laboratory in Palermo authorized by the Region “. – At the beginning of the emergency we only had one machine that allowed us to analyze 96 swabs every hour and a half, now we have bought another that makes 386 at the same time for a total of almost 500 results. Thus, we give the results in the day ”.
