Health care expenditure, laboratory services and IVD market

What has been written until now should not be misinterpreted: without doubt there is wastage in the Italian health care expenditure which must be rationalized. Moreover, the public deficit-now over two million billion lira-will probably prevent any reinvestment in health care of resources liberated through the above-mentioned rationalization process. In the near future, the attention of the authorities should be focused on how to reduce public spending, which probably also includes spending on health care. The message which needed to be passed on here does not refuse to recognize the possibility of rationalizing health care expenditure in Italy nor does it reject the need for this course of action. Instead it tries to give the following warning: in the light of the above circumstances-or the fact that even now the authorities cannot admit to spending "much" in the absolute sense, especially with regard to technology, or the fundamental role of IVDs in health care processes, or the difficulties in which the companies of the sector have been placed-it is possible to state that any blind, or worse still, ill-equipped, intervention in this field would have the undoubted effect of damaging the health care sector, or even place many companies on their knees, without receiving the expected benefits on the balance sheet. Benefits in the form of efficiency and saving can only be obtained from an effective reorganisation of the health structures, in line with the reforms provided for by legislative decree n. 502/92 (and subsequent modifications)--which, due to aspects too numerous to mention, is still a dead letter--and by taking steps towards valuing the laboratory services. As already stated, to talk of inefficiency in general terms means talking of unproductive expenditure: this occurs when utilizing factors whose cost is "too high" and/or productivity is "too low". It is with this distinction in mind that intervention must come; assessing factors not individually but rationally integrated in the production process of which they are part. Given the values at issue, any action not specifically aimed at the elimination of process inefficiency penalizes the already "healthy" elements, causes damage to the system and does not result in any significant benefits for expenditure. To summarize further, the need is for: a definition of what and how much to guarantee that can be taken from the National Budget; the realization of models which, surpassing the current macroscopic causes of inefficiency (which reside in structural and process type diseconomies), would make a correct economic assessment of investments and expenditure viable. In this respect, clinical pathology could play a fundamental role, in that the investments in this particular sector, if well programmed, would lead to significant savings for the entire health care system. The path followed until now must be abandoned at all costs; a path which starts by underestimating the needs and continues with the utilization of resources in an irrational manner, finishing with a proposal for the following year to allocate fewer resources to technology, almost as if it were on the same level as the potatoes (with or maybe even get hungry), at least this would resolve balance sheet problems without affecting the running of the services.