Starting today 31 July 2025, hospitals will no longer be able to take on the so -called “tooth doctors”. These are professionals, often organized in cooperatives, who provide their services to health facilities for limited periods. A very widespread practice throughout Italy, which however has a high cost.
For this and other reasons, the government has prohibited them, but several hospitals report that the timing of this operation could cause serious problems. In August many doctors are on vacation and the structures, without the possibility of making new contracts, could go in difficulty.
The blockade of contracts of the stencilist doctors
Even if hospitals can no longer enter into new contracts with jetty doctors, those already stipulated will still come to the conclusion. The measure was also decided because the performance of these professionals cost much more to the structures than a normal dependent doctor is paid.
In 2024, guidelines had been issued to limit the costs of hospitals for toy doctors:
- 85 euros per hour for an emergency room;
- 85 euros per hour for a resuscitation doctor;
- 75 euros per hour for other medical services;
- 28 euros per hour for an emergency room nurse;
- 25 euros per hour for other nursing services.
The first aid doctors assumed, according to the national contract, earn on average about 35 euros gross per hour, even if in the event of extraordinary shifts, the salary can rise up to 100 euros.
However, the use of tooth doctors involves numerous other problems. By the lack of a specialization suitable for the work done to the absence of a limit for the hours worked. All circumstances that risked making the quality of the national health service drop.
Because hospitals resort to throwing doctors
Tump doctors cost more than those taken and risk offering worse results. It therefore does not seem that hospitals have any advantage to take them. Yet, especially from 2020 onwards, they spread very much, mainly in the smallest and most peripheral hospitals in the North. The reasons for these choices depend on a series of factors that have changed the national health system.
But above all there is the lack of doctors in some specializations. The most cited is emergency medicine, which forms the emergency room doctors. The specialization scholarships for this discipline are few, but also increasing them may not solve the situation. In fact, young doctors avoid emergency medicine for years. Of the 855 scholarships available in 2023 in this discipline, 266 were assigned.
The main reasons for this phenomenon are:
- Low salaries;
- Working rhythms worse than those of colleagues;
- stressful environment, which can become dangerous.
The hospitals therefore found themselves with a serious lack of staff in a department, the emergency room, which by its nature requires continuous coverage. They therefore found themselves having to resort to the throwers, to avoid being discovered.
The consequences on patients
The abolition of the contracts of the Medici Gettonisti worries the hospitals, especially in view of August. Pierino Di Silverio, secretary of the Anaa-Assomed hospital union union, explained to Sole 24 hours:
At the moment, however, there are no situations of particular critical issues in hospitals for the loss of these professionals, since their activity will be able to continue, in a diversified way, until the expiry of the existing contracts. Instead, the problem of holidays for medical and health personnel is imminent: from 31 July the real risk is that hospital doctors are unable to go on vacation due to the lack of staff.
The lack of throwers should be resolved with new hires, but on this option weighs the failure to abolish the roof to health expenditure, promised for 2025 but not included in the budget law.
