The Emergency Room is dedicated to medical urgencies and emergencies. It operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
What is required?
Bring an ID document, your health insurance card, and your tax code.
The emergency room procedure
Arrivals
Access to emergency care does not follow a strict first-come, first-served order, but is instead based on the severity of the condition. After personal information is registered at the administrative desk, the patient goes through the triage process. This is a procedure carried out by highly trained nursing staff to assess the actual urgency of the situation based on specific criteria. This evaluation determines the priority for access to the examination room, using a five-level triage coding system to classify the degree of urgency.
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- Red – Critical: One or more vital functions are interrupted or severely compromised.
- Orange – Acute: Vital functions are at risk.
- Blue – Delayed urgency: The condition is stable but painful, usually requiring diagnostic tests and complex evaluations.
- Green – Minor urgency: The condition is stable with no risk of worsening and requires only simple therapeutic treatments.
- White – Non-urgent: The problem is not urgent and is subject to a co-payment (ticket).
While waiting, the triage staff monitor the patients’ clinical condition and, in case of significant changes, may adjust the previously assigned priority code.
Accompanying persons
To ensure the privacy of patients and provide the necessary conditions for staff to offer the best possible care, overcrowding in the evaluation and treatment area must be avoided.
For this reason, companions must wait to be called via intercom before entering the examination area. Staying inside the premises without authorization is not allowed. One designated companion may be admitted to the examination room if deemed appropriate by the doctor. They will, in any case, be contacted at the end of the diagnostic and treatment process or, if the evaluation takes a particularly long time, during intermediate stages of assessment.
Discharge and payment
At the end of the diagnostic and treatment process, the patient may either be admitted to the hospital or discharged. In the latter case, they must go to the administrative desks at the entrance of the Emergency Room to collect their medical documents and make any required co-payment.
The application of the co-payment is not subject to staff discretion but follows the regulations established by the current law (Regional Council Resolution, May 9, 2012, No. 9/3379). All patients who leave the Emergency Room voluntarily before the completion of their record are also required to pay the co-payment. In such cases, medical documentation related to the care received up to the time of departure will not be issued.
Foreign patients
All EU patients holding the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) follow the same access procedures to the Emergency Room.
Non-EU patients, as well as EU patients without public or private insurance, are required to pay for the services received according to the hospital’s fee schedule. An exception applies to countries with specific agreements with the Italian government (the appropriate form issued by the patient’s country of origin must be presented and registered at the Foreign Office of the Local Health Authority). A list of these countries is available on the Ministry of Health’s website.
Non-EU patients who are not in compliance with entry and residence regulations are assigned an STP code (Stranieri Temporaneamente Presenti – Temporarily Present Foreigners), which allows them access to healthcare services. Similarly to EU patients, they must pay the co-payment in case of discharge under the white code.
The STP code is valid for 6 months and can be renewed.
Healthcare is guaranteed to every individual who seeks assistance at the Emergency Room.