Revitalizing the Italian NHS: remarks on the 2021–2026 national recovery plan (next generation EU)

After COVID-19 arose in China and other Asian countries like Singapore, it quickly spread throughout Europe starting from February 2020. In the specific, Italy was the first European country to be hard hit by the pandemic. The pandemic has left Italy with several “lessons”, as the battle against the virus has highlighted several critical issues that should be fixed (at least in part) with the national recovery plan. In spring 2021 the Next generation EU plan has been approved by the Italian Parliament and then approved by the EU Commission. The recovery and resiliency national plan – PNRR (this is how it is called in Italy the Next generation EU plan) is composed of 6 different lines of action, called Missions. Healthcare is the sixth line for a total amount of 15.63 billion euros. This paper aims to discuss the challenges that the Italian NHS faced because of the pandemic, mainly related to the need for more effective and robust primary care and home care services, Further, the work presents the objectives that have been identified for the use of funds allocated by the Next generation EU plan. As the horizons for the Italian NHS are still uncertain, and the implementation of the recovery plan (next gen EU plan) is going to be the big challenge of the next 4 years, this paper illustrates the current state of the art and context and provides some insights for future actions.