The aim of this planning project is to ensure prompt and efficient emergency health services to all people in the regional territory of Tuscany, and to establish suitable conditions for an efficient intervention by the National Health Service in situations brought about by unforeseen events which may have serious, often disastrous, consequences. This effort — quite demanding from an organizational and economic point of view — may be successful only if we assume that the time-space unpredictability of emergencies cannot be understood in absolute terms, but in relation to a series of conditions and situations present in everyday reality. Only by reducing to the minimum the unpredictability factor both quantitatively and qualitatively this purpose can be achieved. Risk factors should thus be accurately related to the territory's population distribution, geomorphology, and socio-health conditions.

Since emergency medical care must be carried out without delay, each response must involve all components, concomitantly or in sequence so that the intervention is not regarded as concluded at any one stage. It must be open to integration best suited to the situation. There is need for a multidisciplinary approach to emergencies from the first response to definitive care.

The model of health services planning necessary to achieve all this envisages a series of interventions — 1) to develop interconnections between intramural medicine and health services carried out in the field in order to allow rational use of existing structures, such as the emergency department; 2) to establish coordination focal points which can ensure, outside a hospital, the same level of treatment in emergency situations that will be carried out intramurally, despite the unavoidable changes in methodology; and 3) to activate information and self-training programs designed to encourage the development of a cultural and operative relationship between the health services and the needs of the community.