Pisa, 10 Mar. – (Adnkronos) – At work also on Saturdays and Sundays to break down the waiting lists at the University Hospital of Pisa. “Well done,” applauds the president of Tuscany Eugenio Giani. “Offering diagnostic services also on Saturdays and Sundays, in addition to investing in new equipment as we are already doing, is one of the possible ways to break down the waiting lists aggravated by the months of pandemic.Thanks therefore to the work done in the Pisan-University Hospital and to the staff who gave their availability”.
The project started a year ago and thanks to the CT scans also on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, which in the Pisan company have been done precisely since March (about ninety every weekend: skull, abdomen and chest), services have been guaranteed, only to limit themselves to oncologists, to four thousand patients a year more. A way to contain, if not completely eliminate, waiting lists.
The Region had given instructions to reduce the backlog with funds made available and dedicated specifically to a rapid taking charge of waiting patients. The Department of Diagnostic, Interventional and Nuclear Medicine Radiology of the AOUP, directed by Dr. Roberto Cioni, also organized shifts on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, providing weekend examinations that were added to the usual activities in urgency and nocturnal availability and to all the amount of instrumental radiological examinations and scheduled interventional procedures that are carried out daily from Monday to Saturday morning including: a total of about 130 thousand accesses a year for 200 thousand radiological examinations, of which 66 thousand only CT scans.
Without working also on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, making up for the backlog accumulated in the months of the pandemic – which forced many activities to be remodulated by slowing down scheduled exams – would not have been possible.Suffice it to say that only the oncology facilities of the AOUP visit about ten thousand patients a year, from which arise requests for about fifty CT scans a day. The recovery project put in place has given excellent results.
Radiologists, radiology technicians, nurses and administrative staff have largely responded to the requests of the administration, opening twelve CT shifts every weekend and simultaneously activating four of the latest generation machines on two hospitals (Cisanello and Santa Chiara). In this way, only for cancer patients, about 360 more CT scans were processed per month.
But the program of culling of the lists has also involved MRI MRI body, MRI neuro, ultrasound, Pet-CT in nuclear medicine. The administrative staff was busy calling all patients to confirm appointments and give indications on how to access the hospital on holidays.An undoubted sacrifice for those who already support the workloads in normal hours (scheduled activity), the guards (not only in Aoup but also in Piombino and Portoferraio) and the availability, but at the same time also an ambitious project, a real help to those who suffer, a responsible response to the needs of the Tuscan health system.
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