In 2023, approximately 4.5 million citizens had to give up medical visits or diagnostic tests due to economic problems, waiting lists or access difficulties
,
7.6% of the population, an increase compared to 7.0 % in 2022
and 6.3% in 2019, probably due to the recovery of healthcare benefits deferred due to Covid-19 and difficulties in effectively reorganizing healthcare.
This is what we read in
Istat's Report on Fair and Sustainable Wellbeing (Bes)
, presented today. According to the data, there is a doubling of the share of those who renounced due to waiting list problems (from 2.8% in 2019 to 4.5% in 2023), while the renouncement for economic reasons is stable (from 4.3% in 2019 to 4.2% in 2023), but still increasing compared to 2022: +1.3 percentage points in just one year.
Hospital emigration outside the region also returns to pre-Covid levels: in 2022, 8.3% of hospitalizations under ordinary acute care. Basilicata, Calabria, Campania and Puglia are the regions with the greatest outgoing flows not compensated by incoming flows; in Sicily and Sardinia, although the hospital emigration index is low, it is much higher than the hospital immigration index.
The share of elderly people assisted in integrated home care (ADI) continues to increase, from 2.9% in 2019 to 3.3% in 2022, but there remains strong territorial variability: from 3.8% in the North-East to 2 .6% in the South. If residential care is also considered, the North-East remains the area with the highest level of care for frail elderly people (6.2% in 2021) and the South with the lowest (2. 8% in 2021).
The report also shows that life expectancy is growing in Italy: as of 31 December last "it is equal to 83.1 years, an increase compared to 2022 (82.3)", a figure with which it "almost completely recovers the 2019 level (83.2 years)". In particular, "men with 81.1 years of expected average life return to the same level as in 2019, while for women (85.2 years) there is still 0.2 years left (85.4 in 2019)".
"Life expectancy in good health in 2023 is equal to 59.2 years and is reduced compared to 60.1 years in 2022", states the text, and "this reduction has brought the indicator back almost to the 2019 level ( 58.6 years), reducing the anomalous increase that occurred between 2020 and 2022 due to the subjective component, as a result of the more widespread perception of good health conditions in times of pandemic", indicates the Institute of Statistics. In 2021, the dossier continues, in the Peninsula "the cancer mortality rate of the adult population aged 20-64 years is equal to 7.8 per 10,000 residents and has reduced compared to what was observed in 2020 (8.0 per 10,000 residents)". However, "socioeconomic inequalities are also observed for cancer mortality in the adult population, with a disadvantage that increases as the level of education decreases", and "they are more marked in males, where less educated individuals have a mortality rate 2.1 times higher among the most educated, in females this ratio drops to 1.4".