Schillaci: 'Expenditure on prevention should be taken out of the EU deficit calculation

And the recruitment plan? Only 7,000 are planned in the manoeuvre

This is the first important signal, the commitment is obviously to continue in the coming years. However, this is not enough, because in addition to wanting more personnel, we must also make these professions, which today are unfortunately not chosen much by young people, more attractive. I am thinking in particular of the nursing sciences: we have committed ourselves economically but also educationally with three new specialised degrees to provide more training, qualifications, and obviously better salaries.

Pharmaceutical expenditure, including that of medical devices, continues to grow: spending ceilings are raised in the manoeuvre, but it may not be enough. How can it be governed?

This is one of the many challenges facing the NHS. We cannot but be happy that today there are new therapies that make it possible to treat diseases that until recently were considered incurable; among other things, in the next five years we will have more new therapies than we had in the previous 15 years. I think we have to follow new models that are based, for example, very much on Hta and that evaluate efficacy to decide the best price for that molecule.

In just over 200 days the new community houses will open. Is there a risk of not opening them all, especially in some southern regions? And how do you plan to intervene on those who will not meet the deadline?

The regions, as always, are unfortunately a bit of a leopard. We have the direction of what is happening and with dialogue we want to tighten up the timetable, but where necessary we are ready to intervene directly with substitutive powers even if I hope it will not be necessary.

But who will work inside the community houses? The family doctors?

I think we have to have multidisciplinary teams, but we cannot do without general practitioners. I am sure that we will also have their collaboration within the community homes, also because medicine has changed. Today, to think of a model where there is a single doctor in his practice, especially in so many areas of our country, seems to me absolutely anachronistic.

Are you also ready to intervene with substitutive powers on waiting lists? And when will the national platform with detailed data on regions and local health authorities become operational?

We are working with the regions and have put this issue at the centre of our policy. Because being told that perhaps an urgent diagnostic test takes six months is absolutely unacceptable today, as it was yesterday. On the platform we received a letter from the regions before the summer asking us to wait for the detailed publication of the data. I believe that by the end of the year we will have them on a daily basis and we will not hesitate to publish them, just as we will not hesitate in serious and complex situations to intervene directly with substitutive powers.