The efficiency in the ordinary hospital bed management in Italy: an in-depth analysis of intensive care unit in the areas affected by COVID-19 before the outbreak

Fabrizio Pecoraro; Fabrizio Clemente; Daniela Luzi

Given this high demand of hospitalization and critical care, Italian hospitals and in particular those located in the northern regions have been overloaded and the majority of them are struggling to cope with patients infected by the COVID-19 in addition to those who are hospitalized from other diseases. This has led the actual and past national and regional governments to be heavily criticized for reducing in the past years the number of beds, in particular those located in the ICUs across the country. Different newspapers have highlighted that a reduction in the number of beds have affected many hospitals over the territory. This resource reduction is mainly related to the progressive cutting of the national and local budget in the last . CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.