Medical commission for the certification of disability, the paralysis in Sardinia continues. «On 2 September 2023 I presented to the INPS, through a patronage, an application for aggravation for my sick wife, requesting the application of the benefits of law 104»: since then PED, who wrote to the editorial staff of L'Unione Sarda, signing and by providing numerous details, he began to deal with inefficiency. No one has visited his wife in six months. The INPS says: «Practice in progress, it's not our fault». The Cagliari Local Health Authority throws the ball back the other way: «We have not received any requests». At home the situation worsens: husband and wife are abandoned.
Anger
"I feel like I'm being led astray," says PED, resorting to a polite and outdated formulation of disappointment, "I don't understand and I'm trying to ask around." And he comes across rumors «that whisper that the heroes of Covid, the doctors making up the medical commissions, have blocked all visits, establishing a dispute with the regional administration because they want to have paid, in addition to their salary, an attendance fee for the collegial meetings of medical visits to the frail. I hope it's not true."
But it is, true. Only the situation is more complex.
The block
Oncology patients wait up to 130 days for the recognition of disability: the law says that it should be a maximum of between 15 and 30. Those without cancer, on the other hand, waited 180 days, compared to the 30-40 that would be imposed by the norms. And there were 11,500 requests for visits on the waiting list, almost 1,800 from cancer patients. And some of these, unfortunately, did not have time to be "patient", because the disease did not allow them to do so. These are the numbers of the disaster of the medical commissions of the ASL of Cagliari, the most important in Sardinia. Across the island it is estimated that this situation affects around 20 thousand patients.
The activities had been blocked since October, when the resolution of the regional council was implemented which required the doctors who were part of it to carry out visits only during service hours. Result: everything stopped, because the workforce was and is stretched to the bone, and thousands of disabled people awaiting certification have been abandoned. The "good" news is that the health company's forensic medicine department raised the alarm in January and prepared a plan to deal with the drama. The bad news is that the program, once approved, must become fully operational and deal with the lack of personnel.
