Medical Roads Lead to New Hospital in Rome

Abstract

ON THE OUTSKIRTS of Rome, three starkly modern buildings house a comprehensive medical facility whose concept and operation contrast as much with usual public-sector Italian health care as sleek architecture does with antiquities of city center. Rome American Hospital was opened as a profit-making venture by a group of Italian investors in May 1990, because of what Charles W. Neumann, an American and its chief executive officer, calls the pressing demand for private health care in Italy. It's ironic, isn't it? Neumann asks. Every European country that has a very large national health care commitment is looking for ways to reduce that commitment or shift it a bit more to private sector. And in United States, you're looking at just opposite. Neumann was managing director of European division of Hospital Corporation of America Inc, which planned Rome facility then turned