Health Care Management during a Major Planned Event in Italy

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Emergency Medicine
• Event Management

Background:

• Large-scale events necessitate robust safety and healthcare planning.
• Recent years have heightened concerns regarding terrorism, violence, and infectious diseases like COVID-19, increasing the complexity of managing mass gatherings.
• The Vasco Rossi concert in Modena Park on July 1, 2017, drew an unprecedented 220,000 participants, significantly impacting local resources.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe and evaluate the healthcare management strategies employed during the 2017 Vasco Rossi concert.
• To assess the adequacy of healthcare services provided to a massive crowd of 220,000 attendees.
• To contribute data to the mass-gathering health management database for future event planning.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective data collection from healthcare registers and medical records from the event.
• Categorization of patients into LOW-Severity (green code) and HIGH-Severity (yellow and red codes) based on admission codes.
• Analysis of patient distribution, severity, and need for further medical assessment.

Main Results:

• A total of 1,088 patients were treated during the event.
• The majority of patients (97.74%) had LOW-Severity conditions (green code).
• HIGH-Severity patients (yellow and red codes) required further evaluation significantly more often than LOW-Severity patients (45.45% vs. 4.93%, P < .001).

Conclusions:

• The healthcare management system was adequate for the scale of the event and the severity of cases encountered.
• The data collected provides valuable insights for planning and managing healthcare at future mass-gathering events.
• Effective organization ensured patient safety and appropriate medical care for a large, diverse population.