'Dependent doctor becomes bureaucrat, better team medicine'

But doctors have always been critical and already complain that they have too many patients

This is not our fault. In any case, even those who have the maximum number of patients according to the latest convention must guarantee six hours a week in the Community Homes. The real problem is not going there, but what we are going to do there, and the government has never clarified this: if they have to be on-call doctors, it is ridiculous, but if they have to guarantee services such as initial diagnostics, vaccinations, and prevention on lifestyles, a path had to be built, something that has only begun to be done in recent days when Agenas published a document on the role of multi-professional teams.

The crux is that in two months' time more than a thousand community houses risk opening empty, so how do you do it?

I believe that the transitional and emergency phase can be managed by having some of the family doctors work in association with other colleagues within the Community House. We have group medicine, let's move it to the new facilities and in this way the Community Houses will be able to 'live' even 12 hours a day with the presence of family doctors.

But is there time to do it?

This is a solution. Of course someone should take responsibility because so far nothing has been done about this. Now one cannot reduce everything to the fact that the only problem is only the legal role of the doctor, indeed I would not like this issue to serve as a cover for something else, namely that we have never invested in a real relaunch plan because we need the resources. I wonder, but what difference does it make whether a doctor goes as a contracted or as an employee in the community homes?

Who perhaps as an employee ensures more time and availability?

I repeat, dependency is not needed. The solution in time could be to reduce the maximum number of patients assisted to 1,200 (today it is 1,500 and can go up to 1,800, ed) and the optimal number to 800. This would allow the doctor to maintain the outpatient clinic, which guarantees capillarity throughout the territory, and at the same time work in the Community Houses.

If the reform goes through, what consequences do you see?

There will be a sharp reduction in the number of family doctors and increasingly little attraction to this profession

But young people may prefer addiction

I don't think so because I am convinced that autonomy and independence are the most attractive factors of the family doctor. We just need to improve safeguards within the convention by reducing workloads. But an investment is needed.