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How health care regionalisation in Italy is widening the North–South gap

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2014

Federico Toth
Federico Toth*
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
*
*Correspondence to: Federico Toth, Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali, Strada Maggiore, 45, 40125 Bologna, Italy. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The Italian National Health Service began experimenting with a significant regionalisation process during the 1990s. The purpose of this article is to assess the effects that this regionalisation process is having on the rift between the north and the south of the country. Has the gap between the health care systems of the northern and southern regions been increasing or decreasing during the 1999–2009 decade? Three indicators will be utilised to answer this question: (1) the level of satisfaction expressed by the citizens towards the regional hospital system; (2) the mobility of the patients among regions; (3) the health care deficit accumulated by the individual regions. On the basis of these three indicators, there is evidence to conclude that, during the decade under study, the gap between the North and the South, already significant, has increased further.

Type
Articles
Information
Health Economics, Policy and Law , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , July 2014 , pp. 231 - 249
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2014 

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