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Regione Veneto
Regione Veneto is situated in the North-Eastern part of Italy. It is bounded 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%.
From the healthcare point of view, the Region is subdivided into 21 Local Health Units and 2 Hospital Trusts which provide healthcare and social services to the resident population.
Local Health Units provide primary care through contracts with independent GPs and provide secondary care directly through outpatient clinics, hospitals and other healthcare and social service outlets. They are also responsible for health promotion and prevention of communicable diseases in the area they are responsible for.
The healthcare system is funded mainly through general taxation. Most of the hospitals in the Region are public and at the beginning of every year they receive a fixed budget of expenses. GPs are paid mainly by capitation. Local Health Units and Hospital Trusts are managed by General Directors 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. The Plan emphasises the interest of studying 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:
- control and treatment of diseases having a major social impact;
- 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;
- fight against kidney diseases;
- urgent treatment of neurosurgical patients;
- accident prevention and safeguard of health at home and at the workplace;
- food safety;
- protection of elderly and disabled citizens;
- prevention of drug addiction and action to promote social integration.
The Regional Government aims to have a better control on the demand and on the provision of healthcare to individual patients, 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:
-training of staff in 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 for the identification and storage of emergency data;
- improvement of interoperability among all regional health services, including emergency ones;
- implementation of a booking system to improve healthcare information and access for citizens.
www.regione.veneto.it |
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