Public health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the emergency healthcare system.

BACKGROUND: The Lombardy region has been the Italian region most affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020. The emergency healthcare system was under deep stress throughout the past year due to the admission of COVID-19 patients to the emergency department (ED) and had to be thoroughly reorganized. METHODS: We performed a retrospective descriptive analysis of patients admitted into the ED recorded in the Lombardy online regional portal called EUOL (Emergenza e Urgenza OnLine). We compared the data registered in the EUOL with the patients admitted to the EDs from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2019 and from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020. RESULTS: The number of admissions to the ED decreased by 32.5% in 2020 compared with 2019, reaching the lowest number in March and April. However, the percentage of patients hospitalized after ED significantly increased in 2020 compared with 2019 (P < 0.0001), reflecting the management of patients with a more severe clinical condition. More patients arrived at the ED by ambulance in 2020 (21.7% in 2020 versus 15.1% in 2019; P < 0.0001), particularly during March and April. CONCLUSIONS: This analysis showed the importance of monitoring the pandemic's evolution in order to treat more critically ill patients, despite a lower number of patients.

Universal Health Coverage in Italy: lights and shades of the Italian National Health Service which celebrated its 40th anniversary.

The Italian National Health Service (I-NHS) was established in 1978 to guarantee universal access to healthcare. Prominent in international reports, the I-NHS has reached a satisfactory level of efficiency and excellent standards of care in many regions, in forty years. Along the years, I-NHS has developed a structural public-private partnership in health services delivery that in some regions contributes to the achievement of very high standards of healthcare quality. However, the I-NHS is currently facing some major challenges: (a) Italy is experiencing a remarkable aging of its population with increasing health needs; (b) the recent and constant cuts to public expenditures are reducing the budget for welfare. It is of utmost importance to ensure that on-going efforts to contain health system costs do not subsume health care quality. In addition, monitoring of the essential levels of care (Livelli Essenziali di Assistenza, LEA) highlights significant differences in healthcare delivery among Italian regions that, in turns, contribute to the burdensome migration of patients to best-performing regions. Therefore, a more consolidated and ambitious approach to quality monitoring and healthcare improvement at a system level is needed to guarantee its sustainability in the future.