LAW 38/2010: The Right not to Suffer a Law to Know and to Apply

This paper aims primarily at presenting an analysis of the legislation, guidelines, procedures developed to Italian legislation, as well as an analysis of the treatment of pain in European countries. Moreover, it is our intention to analyze the major progress made by pain medicine over the last decade. Another goal is verifying the criteria (qualitative and quantitative standards) regarding the size structure and process that characterize the network for Palliative Care and the state of the two networks development provided by the Law 38/2010 (one for palliative care, the other for the pain therapy) in Italy divided by individual Italian regions, by taking into account the fact that the organizational choices made are different from region to region. To answer the research questions, we will analyze official data published on corporate websites (e.g. Ministry of Health), reports and documents recently published. This paper outlines the consumption of drugs in relation to the total expenditure and consumption per capita, so as to enable an economic impact evaluation on federalism in Italian health. In the final part of the work, we aim at outlining strengths and opportunities of the legislative measure and its main problems. This paper tries to point out the legislative measure value from a cultural, organizational and welfare point of view by highlighting important critical aspects, such as the region’s lack of educational interventions, the lack of attention to the necessary (and mandatory) specialized training of medical and paramedical staff and, in general, the citizens, as well as world worker’s and health professional’s lack of knowledge about such ratified right.