No extensions for general practitioners with decentralized studies. The category - like all the others, even if with an annual turnover of less than 200 thousand euros - from 1 July will have to install an ATM reader in the studio, better known as Pos or Point of Sale: if the citizen asks to pay in this way, for amounts over the 30 euros, a freelance service or a certificate, will be satisfied. This was sanctioned by the Lazio Tar in response to the Order of Architects who had requested a further suspension of the ministerial decree of 24 January 2014. It remains to be seen whether the obligation to install the appliance (about 100 euros) and pay the fee - comparable to the telephone one – and 1-2 euros per commission in the long run could discourage the GPs so much as to lead them to abandon the activity in the decentralized studios or to centralize the autonomous activity in the main aggregation sites.
For Guido Marinoni Fnomceo councilor and Fimmg doctor, "in reality, the amount of freelance work left by the GPs is residual - few of them practice in a structured form - nor are there currently any penalties for doctors who refuse to be paid in this way as they do not have Pos. Furthermore, we are moving towards electronic money and the rule is mandatory: the doctor must adapt and professional associations could open a dialogue with the banks on the possibility of facilitating the transition to electronic payment. The problem is basically marginal: for me, it is more so than the obligation to have a certified e-mail box, which would have avoided many expenses for the Public Administration, and to which even the profession has responded little, perhaps due to the absence of sanctions ».
«It will certainly not be the annoyance of paying a commission that is all the more unpleasant the lower the turnover that cancels out the doctors' microclinics; however it is a further wedge that adds up to others and prevents the development of professions rather than favoring it», he saysMarco Gioncada, dentistry secretary of the Order of Doctors of Pavia, a province with depopulated areas and advanced group medicines. «Trade associations will be able to reduce the costs of the POS and commissions that reach 2.5% (someone like Andi has done it) but the basic problem remains: to combat evasion, states focus on the traceability of transactions, and instead perhaps they would have better results by increasing the deductions on citizens' expenses for diagnosis and treatment services".
Mauro Miserendino
