How much are hospital wait times really rising in Italy?

Italy's hospital wait times made the headlines once again on Monday, after La Stampa reported that nine million Italian patients had taken out loans to be able to afford to go private instead of waiting for care through the public system.

The report, based on a survey by price comparison website Facile.it, showed that 4.4 percent of all loans taken out in Italy were to pay for medical expenses, and their total value had increased to more than a billion euros.

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But how much have wait times really risen across the country in recent years?

It's hard to access concrete data, says Isabella Mori, transparency policy manager for the citizens' rights organisation Cittadinanzattiva, which produces an annual report on Italy's healthcare situation.

"There is very little transparency on the part of the regions...it is almost impossible to have clear information from the CUPs (the Centro Unico di Prenotazione, Italy's healthcare appointment system) on waiting times," she said.

A 2023 report in Il Post, however, cited data from Italy's national statistics office (Istat) showing that the number of patients who had given up on specialist visits or exams due either to difficulties accessing the service or 'economic problems' rose across all regions from 2018 to 2021.

11 percent of patients across the country said they had given up on accessing certain healthcare services in 2021, though there were stark regional differences, with the figure as high as 18.3 percent in Sardinia and as low as 5.4 percent in the autonomous province of Bolzano.

READ ALSO: How bad is Italy’s north-south ‘healthcare gap’ really?

North-south divides are particularly pronounced, with 60 percent of patients surveyed by La Repubblica newspaper last October saying they thought that public health services were better in the north, and just 14 percent that they thought the quality of health services were equal across all regions.

And the Facile.it survey also found that highest amount was taken out in loans in southern Italian regions, with many patients travelling north for private treatment.

Across the country, 53 percent of those who responded to La Repubblica's survey waited months for a specialist appointment and 18 percent over a year.

Just eight percent expressed satisfaction with wait times, saying they had been granted access to a service within a few days of making a request.

Many regional governments have announced further funding to help cut down waiting lists from April, according to media reports.

And according to Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy's national government is preparing to roll out a 600 million euro scheme designed to reduce wait times by allocating resources directly to hospitals and individual local health authorities.

"The reduction of waiting lists is a priority of the government in order to address a long-standing problem in our healthcare," said Health Minister Orazio Schillaci in announcing the scheme.