The alarm is contained in two pages written in a textbook bureaucratese: since January, Sicilian healthcare has been without medicine in hospitals. In fact, the regional Cuc’s contracts with pharmaceutical companies expire on 31 December.
On November 16th, Antonio Lo Presti, manager of the single commissioning center, writes to the Department of Health and to the managers and supervisors of health and hospital companies: “the new tender procedures for blood products, exclusive drugs and non-exclusive drugs are being called, the definition of which presumably, it will be concluded by April 2022 ».
What happens in these four months? Cuc recommends two ways to healthcare top management: it urges them to stock up on drugs, within the residual limits of the budget, with the possibility of exceeding availability by a fifth; or it proposes “new procedures with a specific express termination clause” to stipulate “bridging contracts” on drugs, one for each individual company.
The recipients didn’t take it well. The “absence of a common address dictated by the lead organization”, reads an answer that Sicily has had the opportunity to consult, “exposes the individual administrations to a possible misalignment of prices and / or lack of supplies”. And «already in the past, when we proceeded with autonomous tenders due to exhausted needs, we have suffered significant increases in unit prices and complaints from the contractors of the centralized tenders».
In short, a mess. With an immediate impact on citizens. «There is a serious risk of chaos. The possibility of the lack of drugs is concrete – Francesco Cappello, Giorgio Pasqua, Salvo Siragusa and Antonio De Luca, 5-star deputies of the Ars Health Commission denounce – with the risk of paralyzing the operating theaters, the therapies in the ward, the continuity therapeutic for chronic patients, putting even life-saving treatments at risk ».
And the process is scary. «That presumably – underlines Cappello – makes us fear that it will take a long time and that the bridging contracts could be a minefield of enormous logistical and practical difficulties. In practice, some health managers tell us, perhaps Cuc would do the new contract first than some Asp to activate a contract ».
Individual companies they move towards an exit strategy. «The proposed solution – reveals a supervisor – is that Cuc delegate a healthcare company to make the regional tender, leaving the competence for needs and decrees. So we run the race and he adopts the measures ».
The M5S invites the Councilor for Health, Ruggero Razza, to “seek a solution in a very short time to avoid further repercussions to a health system already heavily weakened by the pandemic in progress”.
But the problem, upstream, is not health. The Cuc, as emerged from the report of the regional Antimafia, has renewed itself after the storm of the Sorella Sanità investigation. But, in a climate of demobilization conditioned by political choices, there are serious shortages of staff. As stated in a report by the Department of Economics, commissioned by Gaetano Armao shortly after taking office, Cuc “no longer has specialized figures in the health sector, it does not have product specialists capable of analyzing market prices”. And nothing changes after the transformation from the Department of the Budget into a special office “in order to enhance its autonomy and capacity for action”.
In organic at Cuc, today, the executive Lo Presti (who should leave next February), with three executive officers (two employees of the Trapani ASP in command), an instructor officer and two SAS operators in the process of stabilization. They are the ones who should manage billions and billions of healthcare tenders and more. Nothing to do with the Campania Soresa which has 100 units just to run the races or with the Ara of the Lombardy Region (60 employees), to which Sicily was looking for a shipwrecked synergy project between Ars and the government.
“Waiting to fill the holes in the organic plant in a definitive way – suggests Cappello – one could look for buffer solutions such as, for example, making available to the CUC the Asp executives who previously dealt with the basin tenders for the procurement of drugs ». The Grillini deputies go further: “The responsibilities of this government, and in particular of Armao, are enormous: the councilor for the economy has done nothing to avoid this predictable epilogue, despite the fact that the matter was dealt with at Ars.”
Today the situation is dire. And there are some numbers, which emerged in recent days in Rome in an inter-ministerial table (Economic Development and Health) on the so-called aggregators. An example above all: the competitions for surgical sutures. Lazio awards them in less than 200 days, Friuli in 300, Lombardy awards the contract in 400 days; Sicily, according to the data updated in November, has an average of 1,000 days to call the procedure. Three years. Only to make the announcement.
COPYRIGHT LASICILIA.IT © REPRODUCTION RESERVED
