The Quality of Health Care: Evidence from Italy

We provide evidence that the quality of health care affects health outcomes, exploiting the substantial variability in the quality of the Italian public health service. The data are drawn from the 2001 Survey of Health, Aging and Wealth (SHAW), a joint venture of the Universities of Padua, Salerno, Venice and Tilburg, providing detailed information on health status, medical expenditure and use of hospitals and other health facilities, as well as detailed demographic and economic variables, for a sample of about 2000 individuals older than 50. The correlation between quality of health care and health outcomes is also confirmed in the panel section of the 1993-95 Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth, which allows us to measure the impact of quality by controlling explicitly for regional effects.