"Today, more than half of the incurably ill patients who need palliative care do not access hospices and specialist home services, with profound and unacceptable disparities depending on where they live": says Tania Piccione, president of the National Federation of Palliative Care , who asked the Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci for an urgent meeting on the topic.
The extent and methods with which hospices and home palliative care will be financed in Italy in the coming years will soon be discussed by the State-Regions Conference - explains the Federation - with a delay of almost 13 years compared to what is foreseen by law 38 of 2010 on the right to free palliative care.
"In view of this fundamental stage - continues Piccione - we ask the Government to listen to the voice of the voluntary associations and Third Sector bodies that we represent and which every day, despite the insufficiency of public funds, respond to the need for palliative care many sick people. An operation possible only thanks to the support of citizens, who support these realities with free donations."
According to the Federation, it emerges from the draft decree of the Ministry of Health which defines maximum reference rates for the remuneration of palliative care services that hospice rates vary from 142 euros per day in Molise to 410 in Valle d'Aosta.
The variability of rates for home care is equally wide.
"It is completely clear - concludes Piccione - that it is necessary to proceed quickly with a process that overcomes regional disparities. Different tariffs can only lead to profound gaps in the services provided and therefore a dramatic lack of homogeneity. With an increasingly elderly, fragile population with pathologies chronic diseases, protecting the quality of life of incurable patients of all ages is not only an ethical imperative but a necessity that will increasingly have to guide the priorities and efforts of the National Health System".
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