Sardinia: supplementary agreement for free-choice paediatrics renewed
It is the fourth region, after Puglia, Lombardy and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, to bring to the finish line an agreement that had not seen the light of day for 16 years
Renewed after 16 years, in Sardinia, the regional integrative agreement for free-choice paediatrics. The go-ahead was given with the signing, at the headquarters of the Regional Health Department, in the presence of Regional Councillor Armando Bartolazzi and representatives of the Fimp and Sispe category unions. The document organically updates the discipline of relations between the regional health service and the island's paediatricians. Sardinia thus becomes the fourth Italian region, after Apulia, Lombardy and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, to complete the renewal of the agreement, placing itself among the most advanced territories in strengthening territorial paediatric assistance.
Paediatricians' unions satisfied
"After sixteen years, Sardinia is taking a decisive step,' says the Councillor for Health, Armando Bartolazzi, 'giving paediatrics back its central role means investing in the future of our children, strengthening prevention, and providing closer and faster responses to families. This agreement is a result of listening, discussion and shared responsibility'. The trade unions also look positively on the signing, especially after the long wait. 'With this agreement,' commented the representatives of the signatory unions, 'we are giving paediatrics back its role, strengthening the link between the profession and the territory and guaranteeing better health protection for Sardinian children'.
Increasingly effective takeover
The new agreement introduces innovations to ensure increasingly effective care for children and their families. These range from the strengthening of health budgets and neurodevelopmental surveillance programmes to the reinforcement of professional services, which allow for faster diagnoses and a significant reduction in inappropriate accesses to emergency rooms. In addition, there is the revision of the criteria for care deficits and deprived areas; a greater IT and organisational integration through AFTs (Territorial Functional Aggregations) and UCCPs (Complex Units of Primary Care). Last but not least, as the councillor's office emphasised, the 'enhancement of the paediatrician's role in continuity of care and prevention pathways'.
'By signing the AIR, the Region of Sardinia takes a further step in the modernisation of territorial care,' the councillor concludes, 'in line with national guidelines and with the objective of guaranteeing quality, continuity and uniformity of paediatric care throughout the territory.
