Exploring Italian healthcare facilities response to COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons learned from the Italian Response to COVID-19 initiative

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic exerted an extraordinary pressure on the Italian healthcare system (Sistema Sanitario Nazionale, SSN), determining an unprecedented health crisis. In this context, a multidisciplinary non-governmental initiative called Italian Response to COVID-19 (IRC-19) was implemented from June 2020 to August 2021 to support the Italian health system through multiple activities aimed to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. The objective of this study was to shed light on the role of NGOs in supporting the SSN during the first pandemic wave by specifically exploring: (1) the main challenges experienced by Italian hospitals and out-of-hospital care facilities and (2) the nature and extent of the IRC-19 interventions specifically implemented to support healthcare facilities, to find out if and how such interventions met healthcare facilities' perceived needs at the beginning of the pandemic. We conducted a cross-sectional study using an interviewer administered 32-item questionnaire among 14 Italian healthcare facilities involved in the IRC-19 initiative. Health facilities' main challenges concerned three main areas: healthcare workers, patients, and facilities' structural changes. The IRC-19 initiative contributed to support both hospital and out-of-hospital healthcare facilities by implementing interventions for staff and patients' safety and flow management and interventions focused on the humanization of care. The support from the third sector emerged as an added value that strengthened the Italian response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is in line with the Health—Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (H-EDRM) precepts, that call for a multisectoral and multidisciplinary collaboration for an effective disaster management.

Assessing primary healthcare disaster preparedness: a study in Northern Italy

“…During the acute phase of the pandemic, proactive community engagement was key to granting continuity of care and improving risk communication. However, in Italy, nongovernmental organizations or community networks often stepped in to perform these functions because the primary care system was overwhelmed (Kumpunen et al ., 2022 ; Parotto et al ., 2023 ).…”

Therapy delay due to COVID-19 pandemic among European women with breast cancer: prevalence and associated factors

“…There was also a positive association between therapy delay and treatment in Italy (OR 1.58; 95% CI 1.17–2.15) compared to Germany. Notably, Italy was the first European country to be severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, placing extraordinary pressure on the country's healthcare and long-term care systems (Mangone et al 2022 ; Parotto et al 2022 ; Toss et al 2021 ). Within a month of the first reported case in the Lombardy region in northern Italy on April 1, the country had already reported over 100,000 cases and more than 12,000 deaths (Fratino et al 2020 ; Madan et al 2020 ).…”

Protection against Severe Illness versus Immunity—Redefining Vaccine Effectiveness in the Aftermath of COVID-19

“…The WHO justified its decision on the basis of data, which indicate that the proportion of infections leading to severe illness and deaths from COVID-19 have satisfactorily declined since the PHEIC was first declared in January of 2020 [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]. This is indeed a cause for celebration, given how overwhelmed healthcare delivery systems were during the early waves of COVID-19 [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. The accelerated development, testing, and deployment of anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccines (a.k.a., COVID-19 vaccines), which were deemed safe and effective by various local regulatory bodies, and ratified by the WHO and other global public health agencies, have played a pivotal role in reducing the likelihood of severe illness and death from COVID-19 [ 14 , 15 ].…”