The Italian interregional performance evaluation system

Abstract

This contribution describes the Interregional Performance Evaluation System (IRPES) designed by MeS Lab of Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (Pisa—Italy), by highlighting its main characteristics and its evolution. Context: Since its creation in 2008, the IRPES has been developed by researchers from different backgrounds, with the involvement of practitioners and managers, so as to offer support to local, regional and national healthcare management. The IRPES is currently adopted by 12 Italian regions, which share a common performance evaluation system to assess the respective regional healthcare systems’ performance. Structure: The IRPES is currently composed of about 400 indicators, which monitor different dimensions of the health systems. About half of them are benchmarked against shared standards, to assess the healthcare systems’ performance. Indicators are grouped into around thirty composite indicators. Data visualization: MeS Lab designed innovative tools to deliver a clear representation of the performance of health systems, which in turn facilitate policymakers to gain a dynamic understanding of weaknesses and strengths of the systems they manage. In particular, the more traditional representation tools (such as maps or histograms) are accompanied by new visualisation instruments, such as “the dartboard” and “the stave”. Covid-19: With the outburst of COVID-19 pandemic emergency, assessing the resilience of healthcare systems has become the new challenge posed to the IRPES. Thus, 63 novel resilience indicators tailored for the pandemic were introduced, starting from the second semester of 2020. Continuous monitoring of the performance of health systems was equally implemented, which has been essential to policymakers during such a difficult time.

Resilience dimensions in health system performance assessments, European Union

“…Three health system performance assessments incorporated key performance indicators related to the ability to maintain essential health services and quickly resume optimal performance, particularly in scenarios involving treatment restrictions or limitations (Italy in 2020 and 2022 55 and Belgium in 2023; 35 Table 3 ). Resilience was defined in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…Resilience was defined in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Italian regions assessed their capacity to sustain the same level of urgent treatments and follow-up visits to avert potential unmet needs, 55 while Belgium examined the number of new invasive cancer cases as a direct adverse impact on the health of the population. 35 This operationalization covers the first two aspects of the definition of resilience proposed by the EU’s expert panel on effective ways of investing in health, namely sustaining required operations and resuming optimal performance.…”

EASY-NET Program: Effectiveness of an Audit and Feedback Intervention in the Emergency Care for Acute Conditions in the Lazio Region

“…Although current performance measurement systems in Italy provide feedback on time-dependent care conditions [1,2,31,32], they often fall short in evaluating interventions at the network level. Therefore, there is a pressing need for further research endeavors to adopt a network-centric approach.…”

"Enhancing Hospital Performance: The Comprehensive Efficiency Index Approach"

“…The CEI incorporates indicators informed by a comprehensive literature review [8][9][10] and intuitively chosen for their relevance to key aspects of hospital operations. The literature review encompassed academic publications, industry reports, and best practices guidelines to identify [11,12] • Commonly used Hospital Performance Indicators: We analyzed studies investigating hospital efficiency measurement, such as the ones related to the Italian National Health System [13][14][15][16][17][18] and identified frequently employed indicators across various domains.…”