Supplementary healthcare: Covip's supervision skips, but triggers obligation to publish financial statements

It will not (at least for the time being) be Covip - the pension fund supervisory commission - that will exercise supervision over health funds. In the end, a reformulated amendment by the government popped up in the Chamber's budget committee, effectively abrogating the new control tasks that had been assigned to Covip by the Pnrr decree, which after the general debate will receive the go-ahead in the House with a vote of confidence.

The new Article 29, now amended, had popped up after the government's launch in the last version of the decree before its publication in the Official Gazette precisely in order to put a stranglehold on the controls of integrative healthcare, a planet composed of more than 320 funds for a market worth about 4 billion, and which up to now are very 'light' (the Ministry of Health manages a Registry where the funds are registered). This is why the latest version of the text envisages that 'pending the organic reform of the matter' new obligations to publish financial statements and reports 'on its institutional website, within three months of the end of the financial year' and to transmit them 'within the same term, to the competent administrations'. The financial statements and reports will have to contain, among other things, the number of members and beneficiaries; the amount of contributions paid and of the benefits provided, broken down by nature and type; the ratio between contributions paid and benefits provided; the amount of the fund's total assets; the ratio between assets and benefits provided and the management costs incurred during the financial year.

The new measures apply to all supplementary and complementary health and social security funds of the SSN, to bodies, funds and mutual aid societies with an exclusively welfare purpose, and to forms of supplementary or complementary health and social security assistance, 'however established, including those of a contractual, collective or individual nature' intended to provide care for the non-self-sufficient (long term care). Failure to comply with these new obligations - which take effect from the financial year following the one in progress on 31 December 2025 - will make it 'impossible to register, renew, or in any case remain on the register' of health funds, in addition to the loss of tax benefits. The new Article 29 of the Pnrr decree also allocates funds for new consultants and competitions at Covip.

Also on the healthcare front, the activation of telemonitoring and teleconsultation services for taking care of cancer patients is envisaged, and there is also the extension until 2027 of the possibility of 'retaining in service, at the request of the interested parties' doctors affiliated with the National Health Service: these are mainly family doctors, paediatricians, and medical guards, of whom there is currently a great shortage. In order to remedy the emergency shortage of health personnel, there will also be easier recruitment - as an exception to the ordinary competition procedures - through stabilisation: out of a maximum of 30% of planned posts, the Regions will be able to hire up to 50% of those who have completed at least 18 months of service, even if not continuous, in the last five years as employees of the National Health Service under flexible or collaboration contracts. Or with a selection based on qualifications and interview, again within the 50% limit, after 24 months of continuous service, provided they have been recruited through competitive procedures (including those during Covid). On the other hand, the amendment that allowed for the recruitment from abroad of OSS (socio-healthcare workers) as an exception to the recognition of qualifications, which is still possible today for doctors and nurses, has been eliminated.