Immigration, policies of integration and healthcare expenditure: A longitudinal analysis of the INHS (2002‒2018).

BACKGROUND: Immigration has become a structural phenomenon in Italy, a country reputed as being 'immigrant-friendly'. The increase in the proportion of immigrants has led to increasing efforts to design and implement health policies throughout the country while controlling public spending. METHOD: Being interested in both the cross-sectional and time series dimensions of analysis, we used a PVAR (Panel Vector Autoregression) model, which combines the VAR technique with panel data models, to estimate the impact of regular immigration on health expenditure. FINDINGS: Our results confirm that an increase in the share of regular immigrants in the total population decreases the amount of aggregate public health expenditure. CONCLUSION: Despite the intense activity by Italian governments on social and health integration policies for immigrants, policymakers may focus more on the implementation of national policies at regional and local levels, on their costs and with a specific focus on undocumented immigrants.

Lean in healthcare: A comprehensive review.

BACKGROUND: Lean seems to be the next revolution for a better, improved, value-based healhcare. In the last 15 years Lean has been increasingly adapted and adopted in healthcare. Accordingly, Lean healthcare has been developing into a major strand of research since the early 2000s. The aim of this work is to present a comprehensive overview of the main issues highlighted by research on implementation of Lean in a complex contest such as the healthcare one. METHOD: Comprehensive literature review was conducted in order to identify empirical and theoretical articles published up to September 2013. Thematic analysis was performed in order to extract and synthesis data. FINDINGS: 243 articles were selected for analysis. Lean is best understood as a means to increase productivity. Hospital is the more explored setting, with emergency and surgery as the pioneer departments. USA appears to be the leading country for number of applications. The theoretical works have been focused mainly on barriers, challenges and success factors. Sustainability, framework for measurement and critical appraisal remain underestimated themes. Evaluations of "system wide approach" are still low in number. CONCLUSION: Even though Lean results appear to be promising, findings so far do not allow to draw a final word on its positive impacts or challenges when introduced in the healthcare sector. Scholars are called to explore further the potentiality and the weaknesses of Lean, above all as for the magnitude of investments required and for the engagement of the whole organization it represents increasingly strategic choice, whilst health professionals, managers and policy makers could and should learn from research how to play a pivotal role for a more effective implementation of lean in different health contexts.