The Italian health minister has promised to change draconian employment regulations affecting medical employees after three doctors received fines totalling €37,000 (£32,000) for working too much during the coronavirus pandemic.
Orazio Schillaci’s comments came after Vito Procacci, the chief of the emergency unit at the general hospital in Bari, Puglia, said he had been fined €27,000 by the local labour inspectorate for breaching overtime rules and not taking obligatory breaks. Two of his colleagues at the hospital were also fined €10,000 between them.
Procacci wrote a letter to the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, who then intervened to have the penalties suspended.
Their predicament has prompted a debate on the pressures engulfing the Italian healthcare system amid an exodus of professionals.
“Yesterday we were heroes; today we are transgressors,” Procacci wrote on Facebook, adding that the fines were “an insult to Italian healthcare workers but also to citizens who experienced suffering and grief because of the pandemic”.
Schillaci said the rules must be changed in order to avoid a repeat of staff being fined for working overtime.
“We are ready to offer all our support to find the most suitable solutions so that these regulations are quickly corrected, the sanctions are cancelled and an end is put to this paradoxical affair,” he said. “The state cannot sanction its own doctors and health workers after having asked for, and obtained, an extraordinary commitment from them at a time of exceptional emergency.”
The labour minister, Marina Calderone, said an inspection had been carried out at the Bari hospital after a trade union made complaints over excessive working hours of medical staff during 2021. “The inspectorate will proceed, over the next few days, with further investigations to evaluate the cancellation of the sanctions imposed,” she added.
In the letter to Mattarella, Procacci said his hospital had saved 8,600 lives during the pandemic, and that he was “dismayed and disappointed” by the way the state had treated him.
Italy was the first country in Europe to be hit by a widespread outbreak of Covid-19, forcing healthcare staff to work long hours in gruelling conditions. To date, 381 health workers have died of the virus, according to the most recent figures from Fnomceo, the national federation of surgeons and dentists.
The medics’ penalties turned the spotlight on a public system that has lost more than 11,000 medics since 2021, with low pay and stress prompting professionals to either retire early, switch to the private sector or seek better opportunities abroad.
A report by Fnomceo in early September found that of the health workers going abroad, the majority had moved to countries in the Gulf, with Saudi Arabia being the most “in demand” destination, followed by the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain.
Meanwhile, regional health authorities are plugging shortages by recruiting from abroad. In August, a further 120 medics from Cuba arrived in the southern region of Calabria as part of an initiative that began last year. Authorities in Venice launched an appeal for GPs in July, offering incentives such as subsidised rates on surgery premises, help with providing accommodation and free parking on the edges of the lagoon city.
