There is more and more people fleeing for treatment from the South to the North of Italy, but Covid has a hand in the data.
In 2021, interregional health mobility in Italy reached a value of 4.25 billion euros, 27% more than that of 2020 (3.3 billion), “the year in which the Covid-19 pandemic emergency resulted in a clear reduction in people’s movements and in the provision of hospital and outpatient services”. Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy and Veneto collect 93.3% of the active balance, i.e. the attraction of patients from other Regions, while 76.9% of the passive balance (the ‘migration’ of patients from the region of residence) is concentrates in Calabria, Campania, Sicily, Lazio, Puglia and Abruzzo. The Gimbe Foundation underlines this in the 2021 health mobility report.
“Health mobility – explains President Nino Cartabellotta – is a phenomenon with enormous health, social, ethical and economic implications, which reflects the great inequalities in the provision of health services between the various Regions and, above all, between the North and the South of the country. A gap that has become a ‘structural fracture’ destined to be aggravated by differentiated autonomy, which in healthcare will normatively legitimize the North-South divide, amplifying the unacceptable inequalities in the enforceability of the constitutional right to health protection”. This is why on the occasion of the start of the discussion of the Calderoli bill in the Senate, continues Cartabellotta, “the Gimbe Foundation reiterates what was already reported in the hearing in the 1st Constitutional Affairs Commission of the Senate: the protection of health must be eliminated from the matters on which the Regions can request greater autonomy”. The Foundation explains the reasons: the very serious sustainability crisis of the National Health Service which prevents it from deploying resources to bridge healthcare inequalities; the further weakening of the South following the greater autonomy already requested by Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy and Veneto, which will instead strengthen their healthcare performances; the Southern Regions which, being all (except Basilicata) in the Recovery Plan or under commissionership, would not even have the conditions to request greater autonomy in healthcare.
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