Soffrire is the infinitive, meaning to suffer.
But in a normal statement, Italian usually needs a conjugated verb, not the infinitive.
So:
Because the subject is il paziente, the verb has to be conjugated as soffre.
It can mean either, depending on context.
Italian present tense often covers both:
So Il paziente soffre ancora could mean:
English chooses between simple present and present continuous more clearly than Italian does.
You usually tell from context.
In Il paziente soffre ancora, the most natural meaning is still, because it describes an ongoing state.
Compare:
So ancora can mean both still and again, but with a verb like soffrire, still is usually the first interpretation.
Yes, Italian often drops subject pronouns like he or she, because the verb ending already gives information about the subject.
But il paziente is not a pronoun; it is a full noun phrase, and you include it when you want to identify who is suffering.
So:
The second version is clearer because it names the person.
It is mostly regular, but it has a small irregularity in some forms.
For example:
Notice that some forms have soffr- and others look a bit different because of the stem pattern common in some -ire verbs. So it is useful to memorize the present-tense forms rather than assuming it behaves exactly like every other verb.