Italy's health system shows territorial assistance gaps despite overall LEA sufficiency

The 2024 monitoring of the Livelli Essenziali di Assistenza (LEA) shows that all Italian regions and autonomous provinces, except Calabria, Sicily and the autonomous province of Bolzano, meet the sufficiency threshold in the three macro‑areas of assistance. However, territorial (district) assistance remains the weakest area, with persistent waiting‑list problems and uneven service coverage, especially in the South.

The health union Uil Abruzzo cautioned that the overall ‘sufficiency’ rating does not reflect the daily realities faced by patients in places such as Giulianova and the wider Abruzzo region. It called for concrete measures: increased staffing, stronger primary‑care networks and more local service points to ease pressure on hospitals.

Compared with 2023, the Ministry of Health noted improvements in both prevention and district assistance scores, while hospital‑care scores slipped slightly but stayed above the guarantee threshold. The report also introduced new CORE indicators, including equity in service denial, adherence to beta‑blocker therapy for heart‑failure patients, and organ‑donor rates from brain‑dead donors.