[Patients' satisfaction for hospital care among the Italian Regions between 1997 and 2009]

Patients have a privileged perspective on health care quality, thus it is important to obtain from them judgments about offered services. Currently, there are no well developed quality monitoring systems related to the patient's perspective, though Istat data sources would b helpful on this issues. We performed a descriptive analysis relating to the satisfaction degree of Italian population for hospital admissions between 1997and 2009. Data were taken from the Istat Multipurpose analysis on some aspect of daylife. Our results show a positive appraisal for medical and nursing assistance; however the rating for the quality of food is lower Our analysis would give a contribution to the appraisal of an outstanding dimension of patients' appraisal of quality of care among the Regions, by considering the implementation of devolution in healthcare since 2001.