Doctors, insurance and emergencies in Rome

Registering at your ASL

Rome is divided between ASL Roma 1 to 6 and your address decides which one is yours, and registering there is what entitles you to choose a medico di base and receive a tessera sanitaria. It is mandatory and free for non-EU nationals holding permits for employed or self-employed work, family reasons, asylum and several other grounds, and for their dependent family members. Everyone else with a permit longer than three months must either buy private insurance or pay for voluntary registration. EU, EEA and Swiss citizens are covered for necessary care by the EHIC or an S1-style attestation of entitlement, and register with the SSN like anyone else once they are resident and working.

Voluntary registration, if you do not qualify

Voluntary registration for 2026 costs a minimum of €2,000 a year in the general category and €700 for students with no income in Italy or abroad. Above the floor it is calculated as 7.5 per cent of income up to €20,658.28 and 4 per cent on the excess up to €51,645.69. The trap is structural rather than numerical: it runs by calendar year from 1 January to 31 December and is not pro-rated, so registering in October still costs the full year. The payment route moves about too — Lazio has used both an F24 with a dedicated tax code and a regional postal account — so get the current instructions in writing at your ASL desk before you pay anything.

Your GP, and how appointments are booked

You choose or change your medico di base at the Sportello di Medicina Generale of your district ASL, or online through the Regione Lazio portal with a guided registration. Take proof of SSN registration, ID and codice fiscale, plus the original permesso if you are non-EU. Doctors' lists fill up, so arrive with the name or regional code of the doctor you want rather than asking to be assigned. Public specialist appointments are booked through RECUP, the regional system, on the portal, through the app or by phone, and ASL Roma 1 quotes 06 99 39 from 07:30 to 19:30 on weekdays and to 13:00 on Saturdays.

The ticket, and the exemptions

Specialist visits and diagnostics carry a co-payment called the ticket, capped in Lazio at €36.15 per prescription. The exemptions worth knowing about are income-based, and the code has to be written onto the prescription by the doctor who prescribes rather than claimed at the payment desk. Code E01 covers under-sixes and over-sixty-fives in households below €36,151.98. Code E02 covers the unemployed below €8,263.31, rising to €11,362.65 with a spouse and by a further €516.46 for each dependent child.

Before you are registered, and going private

Non-EU citizens without a permit or without SSN rights are issued an STP card and EU citizens in the same position an ENI card, both covering urgent and essential care, preventive care, prescriptions and a dedicated ambulatorio per stranieri. They are issued at the foreigners' clinics and at local and hospital CUP desks, an STP card requires no identity document at all, and holders pay the same ticket as Italians. Going private, Rome is among the dearest cities in Italy for self-pay care, and prices vary enough between clinics that the only figure worth trusting is the one you ask for: any studio or poliambulatorio will quote its tariff for a named specialty over the phone, and the quote is what you should compare. The option people miss is intramoenia, a private-fee appointment with a public hospital consultant inside the public hospital, which is how Romans skip an SSN waiting list without leaving the system — each hospital publishes its own intramoenia tariff list, so check that against a private clinic before you book.

• 112 is the single emergency number across Rome and Lazio. Calls to 113, 115 and 118 still connect but are answered by the same 112 response centre, which locates the caller and dispatches police, fire or ARES 118.