Regione Veneto (VENETO), Italy

Regione Veneto is situated in the North-Eastern part of Italy and is limited to the North-West by the lake of Garda and the Dolomites and is divided into seven provinces. It covers an area of 18.380 km² and has about 4,4 million inhabitants that live in 580 municipalities. About 71% of the population live in small towns with less than 30.000 inhabitants and the average population density is 244,2 per km².
Regione Veneto is one of the Italian regions with a positive growth rate (0,5%) due to a favourable social rate (5,7%) and an increasing population above the age of 65 (17,5%) that gives an elderly population index of 132,6%. The Regional Government is based in the city of Venice.
With reference to the health system, the Veneto Regional Government provides health and social services to the resident population through 21 Local Health Units and 2 Hospital Trusts.
Local health units are responsible for managing contracts with GPs and directly manage polyclinics, hospitals and other healthcare and social service outlets, health promotion and prevention of communicable diseases in the area they are responsible for. The healthcare system is founded mainly through general taxation. Hospitals in the Region are mainly public and are founded through a budget fixed in advance at the beginning of the year. GPs are paid mainly by capitation. The Local Health Units as well as the Hospital trusts are managed by a General Director who is appointed by the Regional Government.
The Regional Community Health Plan is the master plan which defines the guidelines for the development of the Regional Health System in the next three years. An important issue emphasised in the Plan is the study of other health systems within and outside the European Union to draw lessons from other?s experience in identifying needs and priorities in the delivery of healthcare.
The priority actions foreseen in the Plan for the next three years are:
The control and treatment of diseases having a major social impact;
The health of mothers and their children, the protection of minors and action regarding adolescents;
Mental health: psychiatry, neuropsychiatry in childhood and adolescence, and related disabilities;
Prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer;
The fight against kidney diseases;
Urgent treatment of neurosurgical patients;
Accident prevention and safeguarding of health in the home and workplace;
Food safety;
Protection of elderly and disabled;
The prevention of drug addiction and action to promote social integration;
etc.

>The Regional Government aims to have a better control on the demand and on the provision of healthcare to individual patient, >from Primary Care upwards. To achieve this objective the Regional Healthcare Information System is currently undergoing a >vast redesign and reengineering process. The priorities identified are:
>Upgrading of human resources on the use of the new technologies;
>Redesign of health information flows;
>Implementation of a telematic infrastructure;
>Realisation of a private network using a public network infrastructure, through the development of a dedicated middleware;
>Introduction of smart cards for citizens? identification and storage of emergency data;
>Improvement of interoperability among all regional health services, including emergency ones;
>Deployment of a booking system to improve healthcare information and access for citizens.

http://www.regione.veneto.it/channels