Pensioners who consider retiring in Italy often enquire about the quality of the Public Healthcare. In Italy Healthcare is a regional matter. The quality of the service depends for a good part on the population density, the distance to the nearest hospital and the number of inhabitants per hospital.
In this period of Covid-19 emergency the many available statistics can help us interpreting the quality of the regional Healthcare. Let's see if we can draw some conclusions from the numbers in the table below.
Lombardy was the first region to be struck by a huge number of coronavirus cases and its Healthcare Service was literally overwhelmed. That makes it a difficult case to assess the regional health service of Lombardy by its numbers.
Besides care for the infected persons who need assistance, the conduction of Covid-19 tests takes away a lot of the human and financial resources of the regional Healthcare Service. We can see that the number of conducted Covid-19 tests are directly related to the obtained results.
The second group in the table are regions which have had more cases of Covid-19 than the average in Italy. Three regions have managed to drastically reduce the current number of cases Trento, Veneto and Bolzano, to less than 10 cases per 10.000 inhabitants. These regions have conducted up to twice as much tests and tested about 165% more people than the other four regions Piemonte, Emilia-Romagna, Le Marche and Liguria.
The third group are regions which have managed to contain the number of cases between 15 and 30 per 10.000 inhabitants. Umbria did by far the best job and its second highest number of tested people of all of Italy has led to reducing the current number of cases to a minimum. In this group Abruzzo has unsatisfactory results with currently 11 cases per 10.000 inhabitants and a too low number of tested persons.
The main objective of the southern regions in the fourth group has been to prevent spreading of the virus. Also this means testing people in order to quarantine the infected persons as soon as possible. In Basilicata the current number of cases has been reduced to a minimum with substantial testing. Lazio has conducted very little tests until April 23rd, which has led to a higher total number of cases, 13 per 10.000 inhabitants. Sardegna and Calabria have satisfactory results in terms of both contamination and reduction of the number of cases. Sicily and Puglia have conducted few tests with unsatisfactory results for Puglia in terms of both contamination containment and reduction of the number cases. Campania has conducted the lowest number of tests. In this region the number of cases remained as low as in most other southern regions, but the death toll is much higher.
Based on the results of the containment of the contamination by Covid-19 and the reduction of the number of cases, these are the Healthcare rankings of the regions of Italy. The smallest regions of Italy, Valle d'Aosta and Molise, have not been considered in this analysis, because of the less reliable results of statistics on smaller samples.
North Italy
1. Trento
2. Veneto
3. Bolzano
4. Friuli Venezia-Giulia
5. Emilia-Romagna
6. Liguria
7. Piemonte
Central Italy
1. Umbria
2. Toscana
3. Le Marche
4. Abruzzo
South Italy
1. Basilicata
2. Calabria
3. Sardegna
4. Sicilia
5. Lazio
6. Puglia
7. Campania