Doctors, insurance and emergencies in Milan

Registering with the SSN

The Servizio Sanitario Nazionale is administered regionally, and in Milan by ATS Città Metropolitana di Milano. Once you have residenza and, where required, a valid permesso, you register at an ATS office with your codice fiscale and choose a medico di medicina generale from the list covering your area. You are then issued the tessera sanitaria, which doubles as your codice fiscale card and is what you present everywhere.

• Bring codice fiscale, residenza or self-certification, and residence permit if applicable.
• Choose the medico di base at registration — you can change later, but it is a separate procedure.
• EU arrivals can use the EHIC in the gap before registering.

The ticket, and what public care costs

Public care is not entirely free: a co-payment called the ticket applies to specialist visits, diagnostics and non-urgent emergency attendances, scaled by income and with exemptions by age and condition. GP visits and hospital admission are free. Waiting lists for non-urgent specialist appointments are the system's weak point, which is why a great many residents pay privately for the appointment and use the public system for the treatment.

• Specialist appointments are booked through the CUP regional booking system, by phone or online.
• Your prescription from the medico di base determines the priority code and therefore the wait.
• Exemption codes for income or chronic conditions are applied for separately.

Private and intramoenia care

Milan has the deepest private healthcare market in Italy, and many public hospital consultants also see patients privately within the same hospital under the intramoenia scheme — same doctor, same building, faster appointment, paid privately. Private insurance is a common employer benefit and is used mainly to shorten waits and cover dentistry, which is almost entirely private in Italy.

Pharmacies and emergencies

Farmacie are marked by a green cross, pharmacists advise and dispense widely, and a rota keeps one open overnight in each area with the list posted in the others' windows. 112 is the single European emergency number and covers ambulance, police and fire. Hospital pronto soccorso uses colour-coded triage, so a serious case moves fast and a minor one can wait many hours — for the latter, the guardia medica out-of-hours service or a private clinic is faster.