Speech by Prof. Francesco Cognetti at the seminar on performance recovery in the NHS promoted by Eurispes and Enpam
Prof. Francesco Cognetti, President of the Confederation of Oncologists, Cardiologists, and Haematologists (FOCE), at the seminar entitled “The National Healthcare System faces the issue of performance recovery” promoted by the Eurispes-Enpam Observatory on Health, Legality, and Social Security, in his speech emphasised the fact that many of the services not provided are now unrecoverable and have unfortunately already claimed many victims during the most acute phase of Covid, in terms of excessive mortality for time-dependent cardiovascular diseases. For the oncological ones, the missed or delayed surgeries and the loss of millions of screening examinations have already realised the observation of more advanced cancers at the time of diagnosis, and in months or years’ time will unfortunately realise an excess mortality for these pathologies, the dimensions of which cannot be calculated at present. The data published by AGENAS for 2021, with reference to the surgeries performed for the top five oncological pathologies by incidence, reveal that only 10 Italian Regions have their own hospital institutions included among the top ten positions by volume of cases operated on. Thus, there is an uneven distribution of hospitals with greater competences on patients suffering from oncological pathologies and this will be a great obstacle to achieving homogeneous standards throughout the country.
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