The Government would have presented an amendment to the Budget Committee of the Senate, where the tax decree is currently being discussed, to allow the Regions to use unspent Covid-19 emergency funds as financing to eliminate waiting lists, relying on private healthcare for the treatment of some patients.
The situation of waiting lists in Italy continues to be critical and recently the Court of Auditors criticized the methodology with which the 2 billion allocated to reduce them between 2020 and 2024 were assigned. The problems would lie above all in the self-certification system that allows the Regions to obtain the funds.
Covid funds for waiting lists, the Government’s plan
With an amendment in the Senate, the Government would like to allow the Regions to reuse the funds not spent during the Covid-19 pandemic to address the problem of waiting lists of hospitals, which has become unmanageable in many parts of the country. The idea would be to divert patients towards private healthcare, paying for the services of specialists thanks to these funds.
This is evidently a temporary and emergency measure. It is not yet clear how it will be possible to solve the problem on a structural level without the inclusion of a massive number of doctors and nurses within the National Health System. It has not even been estimated how many funds are actually left over from the Covid emergency. Various reports, between ministries and Court of Auditorsstate that the Regions have not used this money efficiently, but also point out a serious lack of homogeneity across the national territory.
The deadline to use these funds will be December 31, 2025, when the unspent funds should be returned to the central state. The estimates of the total unspent funds by all local authorities for the Covid emergency speak of 1.5 billion euros but it is not clear how many of these are in the hands of the Regions.
The problems of funding for waiting lists
Just as Giorgia Meloni’s Government was making this proposal, the Court of Auditors released an analysis on the use of funds to reduce waiting lists between 2020 and 2024. In total, this amounts to approximately 2 billion euroswhich according to the Court have not been exploited optimally.
“The control over the implementation of the measures taken during the pandemic emergency, with over 2 billion euros allocated for the reduction of waiting lists between 2020 and 2024, highlighted critical issues in the methodology adopted, based on self-certified data by of Regions and autonomous Provinces which appear to be non-homogeneous, given the lack of use of national information flows and structured information systems, which are currently unavailable” reads the press release issued by the Court of Auditors.
“The document highlights the difficulties encountered by the ministry itself in carrying out coordination and monitoring activities, both in terms of verifying that programming has taken place, and as regards the ability of the territorial autonomies to promptly communicate the degree of achievement of the objectives they have planned” continues the press release, thus reporting difficulties not only at the level of local authorities, but also with regard to ministerial coordination of operations.
