Schillaci: 'On family doctors we will find a balance'

"I am convinced that we will find a solution that must be found in the interest of citizens': the Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci, speaking yesterday at the Festa dell'Innovazione del Foglio, tries to look beyond the resounding stop rained down from within the same majority on the reform of family doctors on which he had been working for weeks, even finding the agreement of the Regions. The Regions had pressed the minister to find urgent measures such as hiring a contingent of doctors as employees to fill the most depleted community centres. An option seen as smoke and mirrors by the trade unions, in particular the Fimmg, which was ready to go on strike and protest in order to defend the current agreement with the SSN (white surgeons are freelancers), 'threats' that convinced the majority parties and Prime Minister Meloni herself to back down.

Now time is running out, given that at the end of June there is a deadline for the NRP, which envisages the opening and operation of at least 1038 Case di comunità, the maxi clinics where citizens will find examinations, first examinations, and prevention. The risk that several facilities - especially in the Centre and South, where there are the greatest delays - will turn into empty boxes without medical staff and services is in fact more than concrete. A flop that, if also certified by Europe, could jeopardise the funds received with the Pnrr: 2 billion for the Community Homes alone. The idea of the decree, unless there is a change of heart in extremis - in the coming days Lombardy councillor Guido Bertolaso will meet with Meloni to try to convince her - is now out of the question, and so the ministry's plan B is to speed up the new convention (the one covering the three-year period 2025-2027) to be signed with the family doctors: the ambitious goal is to sign by June the text of the new Acn - the national collective agreement that the regions must then decline locally - in which to provide for a 'hourly debt' of at least 6 hours a week that family doctors will have to spend inside the new facilities. There would be just under 300 million available for 2026 alone to incentivise them to work in teams with the other figures that should populate these facilities (specialist doctors, nurses, etc.). A path, this one, defended yesterday by Stefani Craxi (Fi) 'The choice of going down the negotiation route with the family doctors' unions to fill the Community Homes is faster and more effective. We have always contested the idea of making them employees by decree'. While for Francesco Boccia (Pd) 'after almost four years of the Meloni government, it seems like listening to a minister who has just arrived'. Schillaci remains optimistic, however, because 'this is a revolution that we cannot back out of and I believe that no one will back out'.