In 2020, most of the Regions of Northern Italy managed to maintain a provision of the essential levels of assistance (Lea) – i.e. the health services that the Regions must guarantee to citizens free of charge or through the payment of a ticket – not too different compared to the previous year, and this despite the first heavy pandemic wave of Covid-19. On the contrary, the Southern Regions, despite having been less affected by the pandemic in 2020, recorded worse performances. This was highlighted by the Gimbe Foundation in a new analysis relating to the monitoring of the Lea through the New Guarantee System, whose data already published by the Ministry of Health show that only 11 regions are compliant in 2020.
Gimbe analyzed the differences between the 2020 and 2019 obligations, in order to evaluate the impact of the pandemic on the total scores of the Regions, as well as on the three macro-levels of assistance (collective prevention, district assistance and hospital assistance). Compared to 2019, says Gimbe, in 2020 the total scores worsened in all Regions – with the exception of the Autonomous Province of Trento and Valle d’Aosta – demonstrating that the pandemic has represented a strong ‘stress test’ for Italian healthcare . However, among the Regions that experienced a very violent first wave, the 2019-2020 gap is very small (<10 punti) per la Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Toscana, Emilia-Romagna; intermedio (10-25 punti) per Veneto e Piemonte; elevato per Lombardia e Liguria (>35 points). On the other hand, 7 of the 11 Regions with a gap of more than 20 points are located in the South, effectively spared by the first wave.
These data, explains President Gimbe, Nino Cartabellotta, “confirm that the resilience of regional health services to the pandemic and the ability to provide essential services in 2020 were positively conditioned more by the 2019 performance than negatively by the impact of the first wave “.
breaking latest news © Copyright ANSA
