CAU: meno slogan, più risposte per cittadini e professionisti

Emilia-Romagna, June 2025 – Press release Nursing Up Emilia Romagna

The CAUs (Urgent Care Centers) were presented as the solution to decongest Emergency Rooms and offer a more widespread and local response to non-urgent health needs.

A nice promise, a nice slogan. But the reality today is quite different.

Months after the launch, the experiment is proving fragile, ineffective, and unfair, especially towards the healthcare staff working there. In some areas, the CAUs are open only a few hours a day, in others only half a day. Where 24/7 service was planned, now there is talk of limiting them to 12 hours. Citizens are disoriented. Nurses are exhausted.

Although Emergency Room visits for white and green codes may have slightly decreased, the total number of visits to emergency services (ER + CAU) has increased significantly, in some cases even by 50-55%. This suggests that the CAUs have attracted new users who previously would not have gone to the ER or could have been followed by their general practitioner. The result? No real relief for the system, and waiting times in the ER still high.

The truth? Those who always pay are the health professionals.

Staff often not dedicated, called to cover multiple services at the same time. No economic or professional recognition. Improvised shifts, absent or insufficient training.
All while there is continued talk of “innovation” and “territorialization”, as if buzzwords were enough to solve structural problems.

Nursing Up Emilia-Romagna launches a clear appeal: we need real reform, not window-dressing operations. We need the courage to invest, to plan seriously and to value those who work on the front line.

Our proposals for real change

• Dedicated, trained, and voluntary staff, with adequate economic recognition and professional function assignments. No worker should be forced to “plug the gaps” without protections.
• Clear and defined tasks: CAU nurses must be able to manage white and green codes independently, with operational protocols and recognized professional responsibilities.
• Assessment of the real needs of the territory, based on data analysis, to effectively and sustainably guide locations, opening hours, and workloads.
• Concrete and accessible information campaign, managed by those who actually work in the services (nurses, not super-managers), to explain to citizens what to expect from the CAUs and avoid false expectations and service disruptions.

The CAU can be a resource. But only if it is born from a real, shared, structured project.
Not from an improvised political compromise.

We cannot continue to build on the backs of workers.
We need respect. We need vision. We need a change of course.

Nursing Up – Emilia-Romagna