Mobility of Italian Patients within European Union

Abstract

The Italian passive patient mobility is among the highest in the EU. This is a sign of a remarkable trend by which Italian patients undertake the so called journeys, mainly due to the obvious desire of each patient to look for the best and cheapest health care provided as early as possible and at the same time it shows the lowest interest of foreign patients for our structures, being this a sign of ineffective health services provided by our NHS. Since Italian citizens are entitled to obtain charge-free health care while their Local Health Authority (ASL) will be charged for the direct costs, it is easy to understand how much these transfers may affect the balance of each ASL (without forgetting indirect costs afforded anyway by migrating patients). The aim of this paper is to analyze the amount and the reasons of this huge passive mobility. With comparing the number and the amount of credit or debit bills issued and accounted by the several ASLs in the last five years, you get the positive or negative mobility balance, if you consider only the costs connected with health care supplied during a temporary visit, it is apparent that almost always the balance is positive. If, instead, you analyze the balance of health care provided for highly-specialized treatment, that is health care obtained by Italian transfer patients to another EU country or by European patients in Italy, you observe that credits are almost totally absent, which is a sign of the lowest interest for Italian sanitary structures, by European citizens. The costs for highly-specialized services is extremely unbalanced in favor of the foreign countries in a ratio 50 to 1. Conclusions: the export trend from Italy does not seem likely to stop until strict measures are taken and practical policies are adopted with interventions aimed at improving the quality of the existing sanitary structures, especially in those regions as Campania and Sicily where passive mobility is particularly high.