Living in Italy

15 Best Hospitals in Italy According to AGENAS: Latest Results and Regional Performance

Italy has many excellent hospitals, but determining which facilities perform best is more complicated than consulting a conventional league table.

The latest authoritative assessment comes from the Programma Nazionale Esiti 2025 (PNE), published by AGENAS, Italy’s National Agency for Regional Healthcare Services. Although it is called the 2025 edition, the report principally evaluates hospital activity and outcomes recorded during 2024.

AGENAS examined 1,117 public and accredited private acute-care hospitals. Of these, 15 achieved high or very high performance across at least six of the eight clinical areas included in the agency’s multidimensional assessment.

This does not mean that one hospital is necessarily the best choice for every patient or condition. A hospital with excellent overall results may not be the national leader in a particular procedure, while a specialist institution excluded from this list may offer exceptional care in oncology, cardiology or another specific field.

For a broader explanation of public and private medical care, costs and waiting times, read Italia Mia’s guide to the Italian healthcare system.

The 15 High-Performing Hospitals Identified by AGENAS

The hospitals below are grouped according to the number of clinical areas in which they were evaluated. They are not ranked from first to fifteenth.

Hospital	Location	Region	Clinical areas evaluated
Ospedale di Savigliano	Savigliano	Piedmont	8
Ospedale dell’Angelo di Mestre	Mestre	Veneto	8
Ospedale Maggiore di Lodi	Lodi	Lombardy	7
Fondazione Poliambulanza	Brescia	Lombardy	7
Ospedale Papa Giovanni XXIII	Bergamo	Lombardy	7
Istituto Clinico Humanitas	Rozzano	Lombardy	7
Ospedale di Cittadella	Cittadella	Veneto	7
Ospedale di Fidenza	Fidenza	Emilia-Romagna	7
Ospedale Lotti	Pontedera	Tuscany	7
Presidio Umberto I–G.M. Lancisi	Ancona	Marche	7
Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria Federico II	Naples	Campania	7
Ospedale Bolognini	Seriate	Lombardy	6
Ospedale di Montebelluna	Montebelluna	Veneto	6
Ospedale di Bentivoglio	Bentivoglio	Emilia-Romagna	6
Ospedale di Città di Castello	Città di Castello	Umbria	6

The Two Hospitals Evaluated Across All Eight Areas

Ospedale di Savigliano, Piedmont

The Ospedale di Savigliano—officially the Ospedale SS. Annunziata—is one of only two hospitals to achieve high or very high results across all eight clinical areas assessed by AGENAS.

Located in the province of Cuneo, it demonstrates that strong overall hospital performance is not limited to Italy’s largest metropolitan and university medical centers.

Its appearance at the top level of the assessment is also significant for Piedmont, a region with an extensive public healthcare network and several important referral centers. Learn more about its cities and territory in Italia Mia’s guide to Piedmont.

Ospedale dell’Angelo di Mestre, Veneto

Ospedale dell’Angelo serves Mestre, Venice and a substantial part of the surrounding area. It joined Savigliano as the only other hospital with high or very high results in all eight evaluated clinical fields.

The hospital is a major modern facility with emergency, surgical and specialist departments. Its performance contributes to Veneto’s strong overall showing: three hospitals from the region appear among the 15 selected facilities.

Italia Mia’s complete guide to Veneto provides additional information about the region and its principal cities.

Lombardy Has the Largest Number of High-Performing Hospitals

Lombardy leads the list with five hospitals:

Ospedale Bolognini in Seriate
Ospedale Maggiore di Lodi
Fondazione Poliambulanza in Brescia
Ospedale Papa Giovanni XXIII in Bergamo
Istituto Clinico Humanitas in Rozzano

This is the largest concentration in any Italian region. The five facilities include public hospitals, a nonprofit institution and a major private research and teaching hospital accredited by the national health service.

Ospedale Papa Giovanni XXIII, Bergamo

Papa Giovanni XXIII is a large, high-complexity public hospital and an important regional referral center. It provides advanced treatment in fields including transplantation, oncology, cardiovascular medicine, pediatric care and complex surgery.

Istituto Clinico Humanitas, Rozzano

Humanitas is a private hospital accredited by the Servizio Sanitario Nazionale and an internationally recognized research and teaching institution. It is especially well known for oncology, gastrointestinal medicine, immunology, surgery and advanced diagnostic care.

Fondazione Poliambulanza, Brescia

Fondazione Poliambulanza is a nonprofit hospital with major activity in cardiovascular medicine, oncology, orthopedics, surgery and maternal care. Its evaluation across seven areas indicates strong performance extending beyond a single specialty.

The Ospedale Maggiore di Lodi and Ospedale Bolognini also demonstrate that strong results are distributed across Lombardy rather than being confined to central Milan. See Italia Mia’s guide to Lombardy for more regional context.

Veneto and Emilia-Romagna Also Perform Strongly

Veneto has three facilities in the group: Mestre, Cittadella and Montebelluna. Together, they make Veneto the second most represented region after Lombardy.

Emilia-Romagna contributes two: Ospedale di Fidenza and Ospedale di Bentivoglio. Both are outside central Bologna, once again illustrating that high-performing general hospitals are not necessarily located in Italy’s largest cities.

Central Italy’s High-Performing Hospitals

Three hospitals in central Italy reached the AGENAS high-performance group.

Ospedale Lotti, Pontedera

Ospedale Felice Lotti serves Pontedera and the Valdera area of Tuscany. It received positive assessments across seven clinical areas.

Travelers, residents and potential expatriates can learn more about the region through Italia Mia’s complete guide to Tuscany.

Presidio Umberto I–G.M. Lancisi, Ancona

The Umberto I–G.M. Lancisi hospital complex in Ancona is part of the regional university hospital system and provides highly specialized services to patients from across the Marche.

The Lancisi component has a particularly important history in cardiovascular care, although the wider hospital complex covers numerous medical and surgical specialties.

Ospedale di Città di Castello

Located in northern Umbria, the Ospedale di Città di Castello was positively assessed across six areas. Its inclusion adds another medium-sized provincial hospital to the national group.

Federico II: Southern Italy’s Only Hospital in the Group

The Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria Federico II in Naples is the only hospital in southern Italy included among the 15 facilities with high or very high evaluations across at least six areas.

Federico II is one of southern Italy’s principal university medical centers, combining specialist treatment, medical education and scientific research. It was assessed positively across seven clinical areas.

Its inclusion is important, but the fact that it is the South’s sole representative also reflects the geographical imbalance documented by AGENAS.

How AGENAS Evaluates Italian Hospitals

The PNE is designed as a healthcare-quality monitoring instrument, not as a consumer popularity survey. It does not rely on online reviews, hotel-style scores or patients’ general impressions.

Its hospital “treemap” presents performance across eight clinical areas:

Cardiovascular care
Neurological care
Respiratory care
General surgery
Cancer surgery
Pregnancy and childbirth
Musculoskeletal care
Nephrology

The individual indicators examine issues such as mortality after particular procedures, treatment within recommended time limits, readmissions, complications, appropriateness of care and the concentration of complex operations in experienced, high-volume centers.

Consequently, the PNE results should be understood as a broad assessment of clinical performance. They are not a promise about the outcome of an individual patient’s treatment.

Where Italian Hospital Care Is Improving

The latest report identifies several important areas of progress.

Breast Cancer Surgery

The percentage of breast cancer operations performed in high-volume centers increased from 72% in 2015 to 90% in 2024.

Concentrating complex surgery in hospitals that treat many similar cases is important because greater experience and stronger multidisciplinary support can contribute to better organization and clinical outcomes.

High-volume treatment also increased for surgery involving:

Prostate cancer, from 63% to 82%
Lung cancer, from 69% to 83%
Colon cancer, from 69% to 73%
Pancreatic cancer, from 38% to 54%

Progress remains uneven. In southern Italy and the islands, only 28% of pancreatic cancer surgery was performed in high-volume centers.

Hip-Fracture Treatment

Italy has improved the proportion of patients over 65 receiving surgery for a fractured femur within 48 hours. Prompt surgery is an important hospital-quality indicator because long delays may increase the risks associated with immobility and hospitalization.

Maternity Care

Primary cesarean sections declined from approximately 25% in 2015 to 22% in 2024. Episiotomies also fell substantially, while vaginal births after a previous cesarean increased.

The national figures nevertheless conceal pronounced differences between regions and individual maternity units. The pregnancy and childbirth category had the largest proportion of low or very low assessments among the eight clinical areas.

Readers planning a pregnancy in Italy may also find Italia Mia’s guide to expecting a baby as an expat in Italy useful.

The Continuing North–South Healthcare Divide

The PNE 2025 results show improvement within the Italian hospital system, but they also confirm persistent territorial inequalities.

AGENAS identified 197 hospitals requiring a quality-review process, down from 239 in the previous assessment. The largest numbers were found in:

Campania: 51
Sicily: 43
Lazio: 19
Puglia: 19
Lombardy: 14
Calabria: 11
Sardinia: 10

These figures require careful interpretation. They do not mean that every department in the affected hospitals provides inadequate treatment. Nor do they mean that every hospital in a region performs at the same level. They identify facilities where the available indicators justify closer review through an audit conducted with AGENAS and the Ministry of Health.

The regional divide is especially evident in access to high-volume cancer surgery, the timeliness of certain lifesaving procedures and the appropriateness of maternity care.

How to Choose a Hospital in Italy

The list of 15 hospitals is a useful overview, but it should not be the only factor guiding a medical decision.

Start With the Condition or Procedure

A strong general hospital may not be the leading center for a rare disease or highly specialized operation. Look for performance data related to the precise condition, department or procedure involved.

Consider Treatment Volume

For complex surgery, ask how frequently the hospital and the individual clinical team perform the procedure. The PNE repeatedly emphasizes the value of directing complex cases toward experienced, high-volume centers.

Consult Your Doctor

A family doctor or specialist can evaluate the clinical urgency, identify the appropriate department and issue the referral required by the public healthcare system.

Check Official Data

The interactive AGENAS PNE portal allows users to examine hospitals and clinical indicators in greater detail. This is more informative than relying exclusively on an overall list.

Understand Regional Mobility

Patients enrolled in Italy’s Servizio Sanitario Nazionale can generally receive medically necessary care in another Italian region, subject to the referral, authorization and scheduling rules applying to the treatment.

Travel distance, follow-up appointments and rehabilitation should also be considered. For some treatments, reliable continuing care close to home may be preferable to a distant hospital with greater name recognition.

Foreign residents should first understand how their healthcare coverage works. Italia Mia’s Moving to Italy as an Expat guide explains the basic process of registering with the SSN and choosing a family doctor.

What This List Does—and Does Not—Tell Patients

The 15 hospitals recognized in the PNE results deserve attention for the breadth and consistency of their performance. However, the list should not be described as an absolute ranking of Italy’s hospitals.

Several famous university hospitals, research institutes and specialist centers do not appear because the AGENAS selection requires evaluation across at least six of eight clinical areas. A highly specialized cancer or cardiac institute may therefore be outstanding in its field without qualifying for this particular group.

The absence of a hospital from the list does not, by itself, establish poor performance. The most meaningful comparison is often between hospitals treating the same condition and reporting sufficient data for the same indicators.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best hospital in Italy?

AGENAS does not name one hospital as the absolute national winner. Ospedale di Savigliano and Ospedale dell’Angelo di Mestre stand out because both achieved high or very high assessments across all eight clinical areas.

Are the 15 hospitals ranked in order?

No. They form a high-performing group based on the number of evaluated areas and the results obtained. Presenting them as a numbered league table would misrepresent the AGENAS methodology.

Does the PNE 2025 report use 2025 hospital data?

No. The 2025 edition principally analyzes activity and outcomes recorded in 2024. The edition year and the data year are therefore different.

Are private hospitals included?

Yes. AGENAS evaluates both public hospitals and accredited private hospitals treating patients within Italy’s healthcare system.

Why are some famous hospitals missing?

A specialist center may not provide enough of the eight clinical areas to qualify for this particular multidimensional comparison. Its absence does not necessarily indicate inferior specialist care.

Can an Italian resident choose a hospital in another region?

In many circumstances, yes. Patients should discuss the referral and booking procedure with their doctor and confirm any authorization requirements with their local health authority.

Should I use this list to make a medical decision?

Use it as a starting point, not as personalized medical advice. Hospital selection should reflect the diagnosis, clinical specialty, urgency, treatment volume, individual medical team and continuity of care.

A More Accurate Picture of Hospital Excellence

The PNE 2025 results reveal a healthcare system capable of producing excellent outcomes in both major medical centers and smaller provincial hospitals.

Lombardy and Veneto have the greatest representation, while the inclusion of hospitals in Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, Marche and Campania gives the list a broader geographical range.

At the same time, the presence of 197 hospitals requiring review and the continuing imbalance between northern and southern regions show that excellence is not yet distributed evenly.

For patients, the most important lesson is that “best hospital” must always be connected to a specific medical need. National assessments are valuable, but the right clinical department, specialist team and treatment experience matter more than a hospital’s general reputation.

External Sources

Medical disclaimer: This article provides general information and does not replace advice from a qualified healthcare professional. Hospital suitability depends on the patient’s diagnosis, required procedure and individual medical circumstances.