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“The management of data in the SSN and data on citizens’ health status falls under the competence of the Ministry of Health’s General Directorate of Health Care Statistics. The New Health Information System (Nuovo sistema informativo sanitario, NSIS), with its various elements, was introduced in 2003 and is the primary tool for measuring quality, efficiency and appropriateness of care, supporting national and regional governance, monitoring expenditure and guaranteeing the uniform provision of the national benefits package (LEA) (Table 2.2). The NSIS is managed, coordinated and quality-controlled by an intergovernmental body (under the State-Regions Conferences) known as the Control Room. The NSIS has introduced compatibility and coordination among the SSN’s IT systems and records process, as well as managerial aspects and citizens’ health. Today, its information base covers 85% of the services included in the national benefits package. Already incorporated into legislation in 2011, e-prescriptions are now widely adopted for pharmaceuticals but are less utilized for referrals for outpatient visits. Through e-prescriptions, citizens can obtain pharmaceuticals in any pharmacy in Italy. In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, to reduce in-person visits to doctors’ offices, the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Ministry of Health agreed to extend the validity of e-prescriptions also to medicines not covered by public funds and to psychotropic drugs (Ministero della Salute, 2021b).”

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“For the past decade, Italy has been working on the implementation of electronic medical records (Cartella Clinica Elettronica), which are the equivalent to inpatient or outpatient medical records, and on Electronic Health Files (Fascicolo Sanitario Elettronico, FSE) which include all clinical records, preventive diagnostic assessments and all elements of a patient’s health history (Camera dei Deputati, 2018). Implementation, however, remains fragmented for both, despite all regions being actively engaged in their development. Furthermore, jointly with 11 other EU Member States, Italy is part of a project funded by the European Commission for the interoperability of the FSE known as the ‘Deployment of generic cross-border eHealth services in Italy’.”

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“More than a third of Italy’s RRP budget dedicated to health will be directed to support the digital transformation of healthcare services, including the establishment of a fully integrated and interoperable electronic patient record system, while about a fourth will be used to finance various hospital equipment upgrades (Figure 24). More than 18 % of the health budget will be used to strengthen community-based outpatient clinics and community hospitals. To boost the future supply of medical professionals and resolve the ‘training bottleneck’ that characterises Italy’s medical workforce training pipeline (see Section 4), about 4 % of the budget will be used to finance postgraduate residency programmes to train 2 700 GPs and 4 200 medical specialists.

“These investments will be complemented by the rollout of the EU Cohesion Policy 2021-27 programming, which will see Italy invest a total of EUR 3.46 billion in its healthcare system. Approximately 57 % of this amount will beco-financed by the EU. Specifically, EUR 2.25 billion from the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) will fund a range of measures aimed at enhancing the accessibility, quality and resilience of healthcare services in the less developed regions of the country, focusing on health workforce development and the elimination of barriers to access for vulnerable populations. Furthermore, EUR 1.2 billion from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) will be used for the acquisition of medical equipment and the modernisation of healthcare facilities within the Italian NHS.⁴.”

Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2023), Italy: Country Health Profile 2023, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels.

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World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems and policies in the US and sixteen other nations.

Page last updated April 21, 2025 by Doug McVay, Editor.