Gimbe: no concrete benefit to citizens from the law on waiting lists

"Eighteen months after its conversion into law, the Waiting Lists Decree has not yet been able to give concrete answers to citizens, confirming that the urgency was incompatible with a very complex phenomenon". This is stated in the third independent analysis on the state of implementation of the law conducted by Gimbe, emphasising that "two implementing decrees are missing and the platform available today, in addition to not making public the data needed to document the critical regional and corporate issues, reports national waiting times with indicators that are incomprehensible to citizens". For Gimbe's president, Nino Cartabellotta, the dual delay - regulatory and technological - "confirms that waiting lists are a symptom of the serious and progressive weakening of the NHS, which requires structural investments in personnel, courageous organisational reforms, a complete digital transformation, and effective measures to stem the inappropriate demand for services".

In 2025, Gimbe notes, 57.8 million services will be provided, but the National Platform for Waiting Lists (Pnle) 'does not say where examinations and visits are jammed, it does not allow us to identify where delays are concentrated and which services they concern: incomprehensible data and no snapshot by region, company and service'. Gimbe estimates that 30% of the services are provided in intromoenia "with the existence of an invisible queue where one person in four remains trapped, forced to wait, to pay out of their own pocket, or to forego the service altogether".

The platform currently monitors 17 specialist visits and 95 diagnostic examinations, classified according to the priority indicated in the prescription: urgent (within 3 days), short (within 10 days), deferred (within 30 days for visits and within 60 days for examinations), scheduled (within 120 days).

Of the 57.8 million services, 24.2 million are first specialist visits and 33.6 million diagnostic examinations. Among the 17 specialist examinations, the top 5 (ophthalmology, dermatology/allergology, cardiology, orthopaedics and ENT) account for over 54% of the total. For the 95 diagnostic examinations, half of the services concern only 10 tests: ultrasound scans (complete abdomen, breast, head and neck, muscle-tendon and osteo-articular), echocolordoppler (cardiac, supra-aortic trunks, lower limbs) and X-rays (chest, knee, mammography). "For specialist examinations," Cartabellotta comments, "the highest demand concerns, apart from cardiology, organ specialities that are far removed from the family doctor's competences. The most requested diagnostic examinations, on the other hand, are first-level tests, for which various international studies estimate an inappropriateness rate of at least 30%'.

At present, the platform does not provide any informative guide on what to do when the maximum time limits are not respected. "The platform," Gimbe notes, "does not indicate how to submit reports or requests for protection, depriving citizens of indispensable information to exercise their rights.