. Staffing standards in residential facilities: a regional regulatory survey.
Introduction: Residential facilities are present in all Regions and several data useful to better understand the activities performed are available through the residential care information flow. To date, some information useful for analysing staffing standards is difficult to capture and very likely in the Italian Regions heterogeneous care modalities and staffing levels are present.
Aim: To investigate the staffing standards of residential facilities in Italian Regions.
Methods: A review of regional regulations was carried out, between January and March 2022, on the website Leggi d'Italia, searching for documents on staffing standards in residential facilities.
Results: 45 documents were analysed and 16 from 13 regions were included. There are important inhomogeneities between regions. For example, Sicily sets unique staffing standards irrespective of the severity/complexity of the residents; the number minutes of nursing care per patient, for residents in intensive residential care may vary from 90 to 148 minutes/day. Standards have been set for nurses but not always for health care assistants, physiotherapists and social workers.
Conclusions: Only a few regions have defined standards for all the main professions in the community health system. The variability described should be interpreted accounting for the socio-organisational contexts of the region, the organisational models adopted, and the staffing skill-mix.