Management, Organization and Performance Measurement in Italian Healthcare System: The Experience of Sicily Region

Regions as well as public administrations in the Italian health system have the responsibility to develop policies in the health care. Within an improvement policy of service quality, Sicily region aimed at promoting an improvement of the emergency wards, with a twofold purpose: first, to make them more reactive to the demand, and second, to make them able to propose services characterized by higher level of quality. In order to develop such a policy, different analysis and design methods have been applied. Specifically, three main analysis have been developed: 1. An investigation of the “flows”, and the identification of the “path” of the patient that access the first aid; 2. A detailed analysis of the organization of the first aids, according to the international standards proposed by the Joint Commission International; 3. An analysis of the production costs. These analysis have allowed the identification of the main differences among the 20 Sicilian first aids, thus allowing the final identification of corrective actions to be realized in order to improve the quality of their services.