It is possible to combine entrepreneurship and the flexibility of a private entity with the public mission in providing healthcare services. Ultimately, this is what the Sassuolo Hospital tells, a success story also included in the ranking drawn up by the English newspaper Newsweek. Giampaolo Colletti interviews Stefano Reggiani and Mariangela Vitone, General Manager and HR Director and General Secretariat of the Sassuolo Hospital, respectively, for FARE INSIEME
by Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri and Francesca Aufiero
There are stories that hold many others inside, like those wonderful artistic creations, called Matrioska, that every time you open them make you find a treasure inside to discover, to admire, to tell. Because the story we are about to tell is that of a hospital. But it is also much more. You might be surprised, dear listeners: what is special about a narrative of this type? And yet, with a little patience, you will discover much more. Because a hospital can embody a certain way of doing business. A virtuous alliance between the public and private sectors. But also a certain way of creating a community, of thinking about citizens who become patients, tied to each other by a double bond. But this story offers a certain idea of understanding the role of the social entrepreneur, inserted in a space, in a time frame. After all, it all started with a group of local entrepreneurial families who decided to create the hospital. There are the Fini, the Panini, the Ferrari families and many others. A story made up of many stories. Because here there is an alliance for the good of the community. It is a story of good administration, but also of giving back.
The story. But let's proceed in an orderly fashion. This story began exactly twenty years ago. An intuition that turned out to be brilliant. The Sassuolo Hospital was inaugurated in 2005. We are located in via Francesco Ruini 2, a street also named after the surgeon from Sassuolo who passed away in 1965, father of Cardinal Camillo. With the inauguration, an innovative management began for the newly formed mixed public-private company. Technologically advanced, welcoming, perfectly integrated with the provincial hospital network: this is the profile of the Sassuolo Hospital S.p.A., which was born from the merger between the civil hospital, that for two centuries was housed in the former monastery of Santa Chiara, and the accredited private nursing home Villa Fiorita, now home to the services of the health district. Stories that intertwine, stories that are linked to each other. Over forty thousand square metres of surface area, 246 beds and a catchment area that exceeds one hundred and twenty thousand people in the ceramic district alone that includes eight municipalities. A reality that has 8 operating rooms, two CT scans, three MRIs, three surgical clinics, three endoscopic rooms. Every year, approximately seventeen thousand hospitalisations and eight thousand surgical operations are guaranteed for the health service. In the hospital there are 23 specialities divided into areas: medical, surgical, maternal and child and health services. Among other things, there are two medical departments, a paediatrics department, a delivery block with four rooms, a department dedicated to emergency medicine, cardiology and also a polyclinic. Inside the hospital there is a library, a canteen, a bar and a chapel. But the hospital also has an emergency room that manages more than forty-four thousand admissions per year and an obstetrics department that has exceeded 1,300 births. While maintaining an autonomous governance from the Modena Local Health Authority, it is a point of reference for the entire southern area of the province. From Emilia to the rest of the world. Because this hospital was included by Newsweek among the 100 best in Italy. «We have always been oriented towards innovation and we stand out for our attention to welcoming patients, for our care for comfort and for having always concretely supported care with humanity», says Stefano Reggiani, General Manager of the Sassuolo Hospital. Doing business means creating community, we have always said it in this podcast. This time all this is even more true. «The peculiarity of our management form represents a positive factor not only for rationalising resources and encouraging experimentation, but also for its ability to relate to the productive fabric of the ceramic district. In fact, there are many donations that, thanks to local entrepreneurs, have enhanced the instrumental equipment of the structure over time, in particular with regard to diagnostic imaging, an activity of excellence of this reality since the beginning, both in the radiological and ultrasound and endoscopic fields», says Reggiani.
Human capital. From the structure to the people who work there. Today there are approximately 840 professionals with an average age of 44, of which 80% are women. We are also the hospital facility with the highest number of female primary physicians in the province. 346 nurses and 229 doctors work there.«The company has paid great attention, in recent years, to the organisational well-being with the aim of creating the best possible working conditions, in a context as difficult as the one of healthcare. To maintain a high professionalism and a high motivation, continuous and qualifying training of operators is encouraged», says Mariangela Vitone, HR Director and General Secretary of the Sassuolo Hospital. Last year alone, 16,122 hours of training were provided, with over 130 courses organised. In this area, among other things, the hospital makes use of collaborations with Cerismas, the training centre of the Università Cattolica of Milan for training courses aimed at our managers, and with highly qualified external teachers. Not only that: for ten years, thanks to the foresight and generosity of Dr. Claudio Lucchese, president of the Gruppo Florim, the hospital has managed the Health and Training Centre for advanced medical simulation right inside the Fiorano site. In this cutting-edge facility, which is also certified for cardiopulmonary resuscitation courses by the American Heart Association (AHA), the hospital has signed several agreements for the training of personnel from other healthcare facilities, such as the Local Health Authority of Reggio Emilia and Modena and, since 2024, it has also had a collaboration with Unimore», says Vitone. The hospital is dedicated to constantly updating its IT infrastructure, including opening up to new technological frontiers, such as robotics: here there is the robotic navigator in orthopaedics for knee prostheses. And it also adopts artificial intelligence applied in the healthcare sector.
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