ROMA (ITALPRESS) – San Marino celebrates an important milestone: 70 years of free and universal health system, born 23 years before the Italian one. A model that continues to evolve. Claudio Vagnini, Director General of the Institute for Social Security of the Republic of San Marino, interviewed by Claudio Brachino for the Italpress agency. The main peculiarity of the San Marino system lies in the integration between health and social care. “Here we have tried to give answers to citizens who concern both the health and the social part,” explains Vagnini, a doctor with 45 years of experience, already general manager of the Hospitaller-University of Modena. “In Italy I had to ask for social answers to municipal administrations. But here everything goes through the Institute, which gives answers very punctually. In San Marino we are working to improve territorial services. It is the center of future health and social care”, continues. In San Marino the gratuitousness of the system is total: basic medicine, pharmaceutical assistance, everything happens in the public. Doctors of general medicine, pediatricians and pharmacists are all employees of the Institute, eliminating any direct costs for citizens, unlike what happens in Italy with health tickets. San Marino also tackles the problem of waiting lists, although to a lesser extent than Italy. Vagnini identifies the main cause in the appropriateness of the prescriptions: “Every year radiology makes more than 70,000 exams for a population of 35,000 inhabitants. It means that each citizen does two radiological examinations a year, a madness perfectly in line with what happens in Italy. The right way is to use public health systems properly, otherwise they explode.” A central theme in the experience of Vagnini is the humanization of care, already developed during its direction in Modena. “Humanizing means maintaining dignity to people when they are more fragile – he explains – and this is realized through a series of initiatives and services: as volunteers who accompany the elderly in the department, reading activities, music, yoga, pet therapy. People need to be considered, to talk, to find someone who is empathetic. It takes something that softens the life of those who are forced into a situation of pain and fear.” The Institute is investing significantly in prevention. Cardiological screening for under 40 has already produced remarkable results, considerably reducing strokes and heart attacks. “People are called home and visited by cardiologists for free,” says Vagnini. Screening for colorectal cancer has also been anticipated from 50 to 45 years, allowing for more early diagnosis. On the structural front, San Marino plans to build a new hospital and improve the three territorial health centres closer to the population. “The best place to be taken care of is its own home”, says the ISS Director-General, announcing the strengthening of home care with increasingly prepared nurses and the support of family doctors.
– Photo press office Institute for Social Security San Marino –
(ITALPRESS).
