{"slug":"healthcare-by-region-italy","title":"How Good Is Healthcare Where You Want to Live in Italy?","deck":"Italy has a national health service. But the care you experience can look very different depending on the region you choose.","author":"Caitlin","published":"2026-09-30","updated":"2026-11-10","status":"published","topics":["healthcare","places"],"url":"https://www.expatliving.it/articles/healthcare-by-region-italy?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","markdownUrl":"https://www.expatliving.it/articles/healthcare-by-region-italy.md?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","places":[{"grain":"region","code":"sicilia","name":"Sicilia","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/sicilia?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"region","code":"calabria","name":"Calabria","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/calabria?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"region","code":"toscana","name":"Toscana","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/toscana?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"region","code":"veneto","name":"Veneto","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/veneto?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"region","code":"emilia-romagna","name":"Emilia-Romagna","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/emilia-romagna?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"region","code":"molise","name":"Molise","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/molise?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"region","code":"trentino-alto-adige","name":"Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/trentino-alto-adige?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"},{"grain":"comune","code":"052015","name":"Montepulciano","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/montepulciano?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral"}],"datasets":[{"title":"Healthcare quality: prevention, by region","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/healthcare-quality-prevention-region?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","slug":"healthcare-quality-prevention-region-2024","coverage":"Region — 19 of 20 (Trentino-Alto Adige's two autonomous provinces score separately and aren't merged into one region figure)"},{"title":"Healthcare quality: community & district care, by region","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/healthcare-quality-district-region?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","slug":"healthcare-quality-district-region-2024","coverage":"Region — 19 of 20 (Trentino-Alto Adige's two autonomous provinces score separately and aren't merged into one region figure)"},{"title":"Healthcare quality: hospital care, by region","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/healthcare-quality-hospital-region?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","slug":"healthcare-quality-hospital-region-2024","coverage":"Region — 19 of 20 (Trentino-Alto Adige's two autonomous provinces score separately and aren't merged into one region figure)"},{"title":"Province-level comparison from BES data","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/bes?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","coverage":"Comune (~7,900) / province"},{"title":"Browse residential prices, by province","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/data/omi?utm_source=ai-api&utm_medium=referral","vintage":"2025H2","coverage":"Micro-zone within comune · 7,587 comuni priced"}],"body":"When people think about retiring in Italy, healthcare is often treated as a national question: does Italy have good healthcare? For a move that may last ten or twenty years, that question is too broad to be very useful.\n\nWhat matters more is what care looks like in the region — and eventually the province and town — where you may actually live.\n\nItaly has the Servizio Sanitario Nazionale, or SSN. Residents who are enrolled can access public healthcare, and the system is built around national standards. But the services themselves are largely organized and delivered by the regions.\n\nThat means the healthcare experience can vary depending on where you live. The official data makes those differences visible.\n\n## Why can healthcare feel different from one part of Italy to another?\n\nItaly sets national Livelli Essenziali di Assistenza — the essential levels of care the public system is meant to provide. The regions are responsible for organizing the services that deliver them.\n\nThe [Ministry of Health](https://www.salute.gov.it/new/it/news-e-media/notizie/livelli-essenziali-di-assistenza-sintesi-dei-risultati-del-nuovo-sistema-di/?tema=Livelli+essenziali+di+assistenza) monitors regional performance through the Nuovo Sistema di Garanzia, or NSG. It scores three broad areas from 0 to 100, with 60 used as the official sufficiency threshold.\n\nThe three areas measure different parts of the system:\n\nPrevention: vaccination, screening, public-health programs and other services intended to prevent illness or detect it earlier.\n\nDistrict or community care: the care you use outside a hospital, including local health services, outpatient care and chronic-disease management.\n\nHospital care: how the hospital system performs.\n\nWe have now put all three measures into separate maps on Expat Living Italy: [healthcare prevention by region](https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/healthcare-quality-prevention-region), [district and community care by region](https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/healthcare-quality-district-region), and [hospital care by region](https://www.expatliving.it/data/map/italy/healthcare-quality-hospital-region).\n\nLooking at the three together matters because a region can perform very differently depending on which part of healthcare you are measuring.\n\n## Why is hospital care only part of the picture?\n\n[Sicily](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/sicilia) is a good example. In the Ministry’s 2024 NSG results, Sicily scored 74 for hospital care and 73 for district care, both above the sufficiency threshold. But it scored 49 for prevention, which is below it.\n\n[Calabria](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/calabria) shows the pattern in a different place: 71 for hospital care and 66 for prevention, but 52 for district care.\n\nFor someone deciding where to retire, that distinction matters. Most of your contact with healthcare will not happen in a hospital. As you get older, routine appointments, diagnostics, chronic-disease management, follow-up care and prevention can become just as important.\n\nSo when someone says a region has “good healthcare,” it is worth asking what part of the system they mean.\n\n## Which regions perform well across all three areas?\n\nSome regions perform strongly across prevention, community care and hospitals.\n\nIn 2024, [Tuscany](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/toscana) scored 96 for prevention, 94 for district care and 90 for hospital care. [Veneto](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/veneto) scored 96, 95 and 97. [Emilia-Romagna](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/emilia-romagna) scored 97, 94 and 91.\n\nOf the 19 regions on our maps, 16 scored above the 60-point threshold in all three areas in 2024. Calabria and Sicily fell below it in one area each, and [Molise](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/molise) scored exactly 60 for hospital care. [Trentino-Alto Adige](https://www.expatliving.it/data/region/trentino-alto-adige) is scored by its two autonomous provinces and is not included in that count.\n\nThat does not mean you should automatically choose Tuscany, Veneto or Emilia-Romagna. A regional score cannot tell you how long you will wait for a specific appointment, how close the nearest specialist is or what your experience will be with an individual hospital.\n\nBut it is a useful first signal when you are comparing places.\n\n## Why do healthcare scores and health outcomes tell you different things?\n\nThe Ministry’s NSG data measures how regional health systems perform against the essential levels of care. ISTAT’s BES data tells us something different: what health and well-being look like in the population.\n\nOur [BES explorer](https://www.expatliving.it/data/bes) lets you compare all 107 Italian provinces across health and ten other domains. The health indicators include measures such as life expectancy and avoidable mortality, alongside other outcomes.\n\nThis gives you two useful views. You can look at how the regional healthcare system performs, then look at the health picture in the province where you are considering living.\n\nNeither is a complete answer on its own, but together they give you a more useful starting point.\n\n## What should you check before choosing a town?\n\nIf healthcare is an important part of your move, I would add four questions to the usual property and lifestyle checklist.\n\n1. How does the region perform on prevention, district care and hospital care?\n\n2. What do the province-level BES health indicators look like?\n\n3. How far is the town from the services you are likely to use regularly, not just the nearest hospital?\n\n4. How does that healthcare picture balance against the other things that matter to you, such as housing cost, community, transportation, climate and access to family?\n\nThat last question matters because the region with the strongest healthcare scores may not be the place that works best for your life.\n\nA town with excellent regional healthcare but housing you cannot afford will not solve the problem. A very cheap house that leaves you dependent on a long drive for routine care may not either.\n\nYou can compare official property prices in our [OMI housing data](https://www.expatliving.it/data/omi), explore broader quality-of-life indicators in BES, and then open individual comune profiles as you narrow the shortlist.\n\n## How should you use the healthcare maps when comparing places?\n\nI would use them as a screening tool rather than as a ranking.\n\nA healthy retiree may care most about prevention and easy access to a primary care doctor. Someone managing a chronic condition may put more weight on district care. Someone who already knows they will need specialist treatment may look much more closely at hospitals and referral centers.\n\nThose are different needs, even though all three people may begin with the same question: where in Italy has good healthcare?\n\nThe useful answer depends on the kind of care you expect to need and how much access matters in your day-to-day life.\n\n## What can the data not tell you yet?\n\nThere are important limits to this first version of the healthcare picture.\n\nThe regional NSG scores cannot tell you whether a doctor speaks English or how long you will wait for a particular specialist. But individual comune profiles now show approximate road times to the nearest hospital with inpatient beds, emergency department, DEA and pharmacy. These are different services: the nearest hospital with beds is not necessarily the nearest emergency department.\n\nFor example, the profile of [Montepulciano](https://www.expatliving.it/data/comune/montepulciano), a town in Tuscany, currently shows an estimated 4-minute journey to the nearest hospital with inpatient beds (2023 hospital beds list). That hospital also has a Pronto Soccorso, a first-line emergency department, so it is the nearest emergency department too. The nearest DEA, a larger emergency department with more specialties on site, is about 42 minutes away (2025 emergency network). These are access estimates, not healthcare-quality rankings. I recommend checking which service you would need with the local health authority, then testing the journey from the actual address you're considering. The estimates start from the main town, assume free-flow traffic and do not establish primary-care availability, opening hours, waiting times or specialist access.\n\nFor now, if you have narrowed your move to two or three areas, the healthcare maps can help you see where you should ask more detailed questions before you sign a lease or buy a house.\n\n## Where should you start if healthcare matters to your move?\n\nStart with the three healthcare layers: prevention, district and community care, and hospital care.\n\nThen use the BES explorer to look at health outcomes and quality of services at the province level, and our comune profiles to bring the decision back down to the place you may actually call home.\n\nThe question is not simply whether Italy has good healthcare.\n\nIt is whether the healthcare around the place you want to live will still work for you five, ten or twenty years from now.","attribution":{"required":true,"license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://www.expatliving.it/terms#articles-license"},"creditText":"Expat Living Italy (expatliving.it)","citeAs":"“How Good Is Healthcare Where You Want to Live in Italy?” by Caitlin, Expat Living Italy, 30 September 2026. https://www.expatliving.it/articles/healthcare-by-region-italy","requirement":"Free to use with credit: cite Expat Living Italy and link to the article."}}