Italian providers are breathing a sigh of relief after a law which meant the private sector could not go to court to reclaim money was overturned. Academic Domenico Salvatore, whose family are shareholders in SDN, the Naples-based lab and imaging group which is the biggest diagnostic player in southern Italy, said: “This news is really important for private providers in southern Italy.”

Salvatore says that, whilst the government has not introduced wholesale debt foregiveness for the south, it has topped up healthcare regions with “a little extra” with regions which agreed to introduce certain reforms.  So Sicily and the Abruzzo get rather more than regions like Campagna and Lazio who have not agreed to this. At the start of the year, regional healthcare budgets also stopped taking into account the age of the population, a measure which meant that the south, with its younger population, will get more money.

The 20 regions control the delivery of healthcare and so the private sector is also likely to benefit from the regional elections in March, which should see a swing to the right. Salvatore says how far the private sector will gain, will depend upon the personalities of the new regional healthcare ministers but, in general, the elections should be good news.

But don’t get too excited. The national government is showing no sign of wiping the slate clean through a general debt forgiveness programme and the south still has massive debts, with Campagnia alone owning some €600m. He says that the private sector in the south will still have to wait between one year and two years for payment. As for patients, they are increasingly migrating north when they get seriously ill. Salvatore says: “People go to Bologna or Milan, depending upon their condition.”