DL 172/21: What changes for healthcare professionals

Law Decree 172/2021 of 26/11/2021

The law decree 1 April 2021, n. 44, which introduced the vaccination obligation for health professions and health care workers.

Basically, here are the changes:

• the obligation includes the third dose starting from 15 December 2021;
• the control of compliance with the obligation is entirely the responsibility of the professional associations using the DGC IT platform;
• suspension from exercise is immediate after the communication deadline (referred to in paragraph 3 of Article 4 of Legislative Decree 44 amended: within 5 days from the verification of non-compliance with the obligation, the interested party must respond, possibly also with the request for booking the vaccination to be carried out within 20 days from the invitation received by the Order, and to be communicated within 3 days from the inoculation); the employer, in the case of employees, verifies compliance, being directly informed by the professional order to which they belong (here we do not know the timing and methods with which the order will be aware of the workplace, the fact remains that carrying out work in violation of the provisions generates a penalty ranging from € 600 to € 1500 - Article 4 ter paragraph 5).
• the suspension period is extended, passing from the term of 31/12 previously provided and connected to the state of emergency, to "no more than 6 months starting from 15/12/2021" therefore until 15/06/2022. Attention: for healthcare professionals and only for healthcare professionals (not the employees of the healthcare facilities referred to in Article 4 ter) the suspension is effective until the completion of the first vaccination cycle (the two doses) or up to the booster dose if only that is missing (therefore it is not enough to start vaccinating to return but the two doses of the primary cycle must be carried out and communicated).
• the novelty is introduced for which the fulfillment of the vaccination obligation is a requisite for registration in the register (if you are not vaccinated you cannot register with the professional order, while before the registration was a thing in itself and it was eventually suspended subsequently);
• in the event of exemption or deferral, the subjects must be relocated to tasks that avoid the "risk of spread" of Sars-CoV-2;
• we specify that Article 4 ter is introduced (to Law Decree 44/2021) where those obliged to vaccinate include - for health professionals - also "dental offices, doctors and other health professions, where equipped to provide outpatient surgery services, or diagnostic and therapeutic procedures of particular complexity or which involve a risk to patient safety, identified pursuant to paragraph 4, as well as for structures exclusively dedicated to diagnostic activities, also carried out in favor of third parties, and for the provision of home care " (the reference is to article 8ter of the legislative decree 502/1992). Also included are all those who work, for any reason (therefore also clerical), in the aforementioned structures and for the latter the control activities are delegated directly to the employer - the period of suspension provided is the same, except due to the fact that for these workers, as for teachers & co, it may be enough to start the vaccination cycle and not be required to complete it. We use the conditional because the text says "until start OR next completion". In any case, we are talking about minor changes, given the stakes.

The penalties related to the carrying out of the working activity in violation of the provisions are also the same, from € 600 to € 1500.

The Law Decree n. 44/2021 with all its changes mentioned above can be found updated at this link: https://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:decreto.legge:2021;44