At the Santissima Trinità in Cagliari there is a landfill of hospital beds. About twenty, balanced for dialysis patients, abandoned in the open, close to the surrounding wall on the side of Via Timavo. They cannot be used, because if it was possible until some time ago, they are now obsolete. They cannot be returned to their owners, who show no signs of life. And disposal is also difficult. Furthermore, bureaucracy is involved in this story.
Those are rental beds, which were supplied by the Sorin Group on the basis of a contract signed in 2008. They are therefore not the property of the local health authority. And here lies the problem.
«Since 2011 , repeated difficulties have been encountered in having maintenance carried out and to date», the Cagliari health company says, «they are considered obsolete and unsafe for use». In 2019, however, two things happened. The first: the ATS has purchased new beds and made them available to the Nephrology and dialysis department. But it was also decided to redeem the old ones, which could be useful, given that the rental contract had expired. The alternative was immediate withdrawal by the supplier company.
«Despite the fact that the urgency of a response was specified in the notes, also indicating the injunction for a speedy withdrawal if the redemption proposal towards the ATS was not accepted», continues the ASL, «the Clinical Engineering structure did not never received any response on the matter. Therefore, given the impossibility of proceeding with the disposal of non-owned assets, the beds were allocated in a warehouse of the Santissima Trinità". Therefore, since they could not be thrown away, they were stored in a closed space. Which for a few months has become necessary for other goods. So they were piled up in the open "waiting to dispose of them in accordance with the regulations, a procedure already started by the company management".
This is the reconstruction of the company. Which makes the Fials trade unionist, «Of course, there are contractual rules», he attacks, I understand that each scale bed costs over two thousand euros: seeing them piled up there, permanently ruined in the rain and exposed to the elements, gives the idea of the decadence of the system".
