The Challenge and the Future of Health Care Turnaround Plans: Evidence from the Italian Experience

Over the last two decades, health policy and governance in Italy have undergone decentralisation at the regional level. The central government was expected to play a guiding role in defining minimum care standards and controlling health expenditures at the regional level in order to keep the entire Italian National Health System (INHS) on track. Although health performance trends have been consistent across regions, public health expenditures have been variable and contributed to a cumulative deficit of 38 billion Euros from 2001 to 2010. To address the deficit, the government called for a resolution introducing a partial bail-out plan and later institutionalised a process to facilitate a turnaround. The upturn started with the development of a formal regional turnaround plan that proposed strategic actions to address the structural determinants of costs. The effectiveness of this tool was widely questioned, and many critics suggested that it was focused more on methods to address short-term issues than on the long-term strategic reconfiguration that is required for regional health systems to ultimately address the structural causes of deficits.We propose an interpretative framework to understand the advantages and disadvantages of turnaround plans, and we apply the findings to the development of policy recommendations for the structure, methods, processes and contexts of the implementation of this tool.