The outpatient care in the Latium region (Italy) in 2001]

The Region of Latium has been operating an Outpatient Care Information System (SIAS) since 1997 to monitor the supply of outpatient care in a territory with a population of over five million. The present work has the aim of describing the outpatient care in the region, in terms of number of facilities involved by category (public and private, operating in the regional public health system) and volume of procedures rendered to residents in 2001. Of the 971 outpatient facilities operating in hospitals and elsewhere--37% state managed and 67% private--distributed in a non-uniform manner throughout the region, the majority is concentrated in the city of Rome, which by itself accounts for 49% of its total amount of facilities, and in a lesser measure in the other provincial capitals (Viterbo, Rieti, Frosinone, Latina). In 2001, 71 million procedures were performed, comprising 17 million prescriptions, for an economic value of over 400 million Euros. The three specialties of greatest use were Lab Analysis, Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation, and Radiology, making up 88% of the total outpatient procedures performed within the precinct of the regional health service, in respective measures of 57%, 27%, and 4%. It is noted that the public facilities are prevalently polyspecialistic while a great number of private facilities are monospecialistic and perform procedures almost exclusively (96%) in the three specialties of greatest use. The other specialties which receive notable use are Cardiology, Eye Care, Orthopedics and Neurology. In general, the greater the number of facilities there are in either the public or private sector, the greater the level of activity in terms of procedures performed, with the exception of the area of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation where the correlation is inversely proportioned; in fact, for this specialty the public facilities, which are represented in a much greater number throughout the region, supply only 7% of the volume of activity.