@article{De Palma_2026, title={Bridging Two Gaps: A Roadmap for Collaboration Between Occupational Physicians and General Practitioners}, volume={117}, url={https://mattioli1885journals.com/index.php/lamedicinadellavoro/article/view/19121}, DOI={10.23749/mdl.2026.19121}, abstractNote={
Occupational physicians (OPs) and general practitioners (GPs) manage overlapping aspects of the same patient’s health yet rarely communicate with one another. By assigning OPs a role in promoting cancer screening, Law 198/2025 has created in Italy a regulatory link between occupational surveillance and public health prevention—a link that cannot function without a structured exchange of data between the two professional roles. This commentary argues that the new regulatory framework, together with Legislative Decree 135/2024 on carcinogens, mutagens, and substances toxic to reproduction, and Legislative Decree 29/2024 on active aging, offers an unprecedented—yet narrow—window of opportunity to build formal collaboration between OPs and GPs in Italy. Another argument concerns the growing presence of foreign-born workers, who may carry undiagnosed endemic conditions and face language barriers that make OP–GP coordination essential for safe fitness-for-work assessments. Drawing on documented challenges from similar initiatives in the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Finland, we identify the main structural obstacles in the Italian context and propose a three-tiered roadmap for implementation, progressing from immediate consensus-based models to the long-term integration of occupational health data into the Electronic Health Record 2.0. }, number={4}, journal={La Medicina del Lavoro}, author={De Palma, Giuseppe}, year={2026}, month={Aug.}, pages={19121} }