Last Days in Italy Part 3: A Tale of Two Healthcare Systems
Pronto soccorso- emergency room and sala d’attesa- waiting room
I’ve never had to stay in an American hospital overnight (thank God), and I don’t claim to know much about the American healthcare system, but I do feel like I’ve gotten to know the Italian system pretty well. Here are some facts, observations, comparisons, etc.
-Italy has a national healthcare plan that provides hospital and medical benefits to italian citizens and legal residents. To become a legal resident I had to fill out an application for a “permesso di sogiorno” and then wait for a really long time at the post office (one of the few places in Italy where there is a line, and its always long) to sign it and send it in.
-Italy is 2nd (France is 1st) in the World Health Organization’s healthcare rankings ( http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/pdf/Archive/Soc/soc.retirement/2008-06/msg04152.pdf ), and the United States is 37th (despite being the highest spending).
-When I got to the emergency room (Pronto soccorso) on tuesday night I gave my name (which the receptionist just wrote at the bottom of a list on a piece of scrap paper, making it feel more like a restaurant than a hospital) and showed my passport, and that was all I had to do for the entire time I was there. No forms at all. When I was “discharged,” my doctor just came and told me I could leave whenever I wanted.. and that was it. Very different from the united states. I did have to wait for over three hours to be seen, but I’m not sure that that would have been much different here. When emergencies keep rolling in you just have to wait.
-I don’t want to say that the Italian hospital wasn’t sanitary, because it felt completely clean and safe, but it definitely wasn’t up to the American standard of clean. I don’t know if it’s because American’s are just that much more obsessed with cleanliness or if Italy doesn’t have problems with crazy super-viruses. Italian doctors and nurses were a lot less careful with like cotton balls that had blood on them and things like that, and the directions I got there for like using needles were a lot less strict than the ones I got when I got back here. The only thing that felt a little questionable was the fact that there was no soap in the bathroom in my room.
-For better or worse (felt more like the latter), there was no rush at all to get me out of the hospital. I ended up having to stay for an entire week (which apparently my mom, in her infinite wisdom, saw coming, but I didn’t). We were afraid that if things weren’t in good shape when I got back home they would send me back to the hospital, but apparently, you have to be in seriously bad shape to be hospitalized at all here, so no need to have worried about that.
-Finally, because all the healthcare is free, Italian hospitals are less luxurious. There was one small TV out in the lounge, I had three roommates, and there wasn’t anywhere comfortable for visitors to sit. My mom spent most of the week in a hard plastic chair.
Overall, I was really impressed with Italian healthcare, and if you’re going to end up in a hospital somewhere outside, I would recommend Padova. I don’t know exactly how Obama’s plan compares to what Italy has, but what I experienced of national healthcare seemed like a pretty sweet deal.
