Waiting lists, up to a year for mammography and colonoscopy but on emergencies we are almost there

“Good” but with noticeable anomalies for urgent and short services, ditto but with significant critical issues for deferrable services. Including - for the oncology area - mammography for which you can wait up to 320 days and colonoscopy for which you can reach 360 days. The first results of the National Waiting List Platform (Pnla) fresh from publication on the Transparency portal of Agenas, the Agency for Regional Health Services as provided for by the Schillaci law (no. 107 of 29 July 2024) which came into force at the beginning of August a year ago, start a story that has been promised for a long time.

Because waiting lists are among the first critical issues reported by citizens and because the very platform that should identify the main anomalies is indicated as the first useful tool to intervene, even surgically, to bring back into line sometimes crazy timescales. Waiting lists in healthcare for a civilized country are a "shameful" phenomenon, as the Court of Auditors points out in its Judgment of equalization in which it indicates as a necessary path also putting doctors and nurses back at the center of the "health village" with a view to better uniformity of services throughout the national territory.

The first public version of the Waiting List Dashboard does not actually take into account regional and corporate performance. But the Agenas portal does offer a first treasure trove of information and, moreover, as the Minister of Health Schillaci himself declared on the site when announcing the green light to the platform, "we are improving, but we must multiply our efforts together with the Regions to guarantee citizens timely access to health services".

In the five months from January to May, there were 23 million reservations by citizens for healthcare services at public or private accredited SSN centers, including those in the intramoenia private practice regime. Of these, 13.216 million were for diagnostic tests and over 9.530 million were for visits. While overall, 1 million were booked on weekends. Of all of them, the percentages for priority classes indicated in the prescribing doctor's prescription are reported: 2.2% of visits and 1.8% of tests are classified as "urgent" (U) and therefore to be provided within 72 hours; 17.5% of visits and 14.3% of exams as “short” (B, within 10 days), 44.4% of visits and 36.5% of exams as “deferrable” (D, 30 days for visits and 60 days for exams) and 36% of visits and 47.4% of exams as “schedulable” (P, to be administered within 120 days).

In general, most visits and tests are provided within the timeframes set by the priority class, but while this is especially true for urgent and short-term services, those for which the timeframes are less stringent show their weaknesses.