Alto Mantovano Committee Seeks Meeting Over Hospital Unification Concerns

“We have serious doubts about what the general director of the hospital company Carlo Poma has proposed when he talked about a single hospital throughout the province: we request a meeting and an exchange of views where we can discuss people’s issues and concerns in Alto Mantovano.”

The president of the committee for the safeguarding of hospital facilities in Alto Mantovano, Luca Placidi, publicly expresses the opinions that committee members voiced during the last meeting, which took place the day after the statements made by the general director of the Poma company.

He had said he was planning to draw up a three-year plan for Mantovan hospitals aimed at unifying services, in order to avoid creating duplicates in the province and to make travel for Mantovan residents to out-of-province hospitals even more likely.

Concerns about hospital unification

“In our opinion, there cannot be a single structure in all of Mantova province that houses the most important departments. If the aim is to prevent Mantovan patients from transferring to hospitals in other provinces, we are worried that this choice could actually encourage it.”

“The peripheral areas of the province, such as Castiglione, have residents who are much closer to important centers like Desenzano and Montichiari than to Mantova itself.” The committee’s concern, which is not alarmist but still quite evident, leads to considerations that they would like to discuss specifically with Poma’s leadership:

“The neighboring provinces do not operate in this way: just look at Brescia, which has a very large civil hospital and complete functioning centers in peripheral zones such as Desenzano.”

“We, the committee, confident in the good will and capabilities of the new general director, would like the opportunity to meet him and discuss these issues so as to express the concerns of the people in our area, which constitutes the most important economic reality of the province.”