The flop of the Community Homes: only a third open and in many there are no doctors

If healthcare is the Cinderella of Italian public spending, then prevention - all those investments aimed at preventing the onset of diseases - is the Cinderella of the National Health Service. Because not only do the Regions today barely invest the indispensable minimum - that is, 5% of the National Health Fund worth 134 billion - in screening, vaccinations and lifestyle promotion, but they also do it poorly, given that no less than seven Regions have failed precisely in prevention activities.

The turning point could finally come from the NRP, which is investing 2 billion to open the brand new Community Homes, the place destined to get prevention off the ground. It is a pity that two years after the deadline set by Europe to open 1420 of them, only 413 are currently active, concentrated in 11 regions - in the remaining regions there are still no facilities open - with the serious handicap that there are few health personnel working in them, in a quarter even no doctors. In practice they are often empty boxes.

According to the latest monitoring of the Pnrr-labelled territorial healthcare system, which the Sole 24 ore newspaper was able to inspect, as at 30 June 2024 there were 413 active Community Homes, less than a third of the total: of these, more than half are in Lombardy (136) and Emilia (123). They are followed by Veneto (62), Tuscany (35), Piedmont (26) and Abruzzo (15). Apart from a few scattered structures in the other regions, in no less than ten - Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Friuli, Lazio, Bolzano, Trento, Apulia, Sardinia and Valle d'Aosta - there is not a single active Community House. And yet they would be very useful, given that in these new facilities - open from 12 to 24 hours seven days a week - one should find examinations, examinations, vaccinations, health education, and all the prevention activities currently scattered in a thousand rivulets in the ASLs. Services closer to home that would prevent many from having to resort, as too often happens, to emergency rooms to get an answer.

However, patients knocking at the Community Homes in several cases are likely to be very disappointed. In fact, the monitoring shows that the biggest vulnus is the still very limited presence of medical personnel: in as many as 120 of the 413 active Community Homes there is not even the activity of primary care physicians and in 137 there are no paediatricians, respectively in 58 and 69 physicians and paediatricians are present for less than 30 hours a week while in 60 and 66 they are present for between 30 and 49 hours. Only in 175 Community Homes is the presence of doctors between 50 and 60 hours per week and in 141 that of paediatricians. As if to say that at the moment in these structures that should finally get care close to Italians off the ground, there are essentially nursing services.

The node of the family doctors