New departments inaugurated at Cardarelli Hospital: emergency medicine, a renovated intensive care unit (TIC), and a third hemodynamics room.

Naples – Southern Italy's largest hospital is expanding. Cardarelli Hospital's general manager, Antonio D'Amore, today inaugurated three new facilities within the Emergency Department: the Emergency Medicine department, the new Coronary Intensive Care Unit (CCU), and the third cath lab. This long-awaited move aims to reduce pressure on the emergency department and ensure faster responses to the most complex cases.

A department created on areas seized in 2008

The new Emergency Medicine department—an extension of the Obi (Short-Term Intensive Care) Emergency Department—has 17 beds and was built using areas that had been unused for nearly twenty years, after being seized in 2008. "It was a department that didn't exist in this hospital, and it was designed and built in a very short time," D'Amore emphasized, acknowledging the work of the technical offices.

"There's nothing more behind the Cardarelli"

The new facility has a specific strategic purpose: to accommodate patients with complex conditions who cannot yet be transferred to regular wards, thus easing emergency room traffic. "In the last three months, we've received about 400 transfers from other hospitals," the director explained. "We need to realize that we are the point of reference for the entire Campania region. We are the hospital that provides the answers."

After 40 years, the Utic has also been renewed.

Along with the opening of the new emergency department, the Cardarelli Hospital is also inaugurating a completely renovated UTIC (Intensive Care Unit), after forty years. This is a sign of the extensive redevelopment plan initiated by management: €30 million invested to renovate 20 departments and an entire pavilion. The latter, completed about a year and a half ago, is dedicated to outpatient clinics and is connected to the rest of the hospital by an internal shuttle, to prevent overcrowding in the departments.

Waiting Lists and Passive Mobility: The Challenges

D'Amore didn't shy away from the most critical issues facing Campania's healthcare system. Regarding waiting lists, he noted how the presence of "extremely high-level" chief physicians generates a demand that's difficult to manage. On the topic of passive mobility—that is, patients seeking treatment outside the region—he offered a novel interpretation: "Very often, a parent is invited by their child, who works in the North, to travel to their region for care. This is also an impactful factor, in addition to the high level of clinical quality in the South."