Pierfrancesco Bellini, Ivan Bruno, Attilio Evangelisti, Paolo Nesi, Davide Rogai

INTRODUCTION
Waiting lists are considered as an important matter by most of Public Healthcare Systems. Policy interventions are difficult to assess: waiting lists represent dynamical sets affected by complex interaction of many factors (1) and explicit prioritisation algorithms are needed to esure propt treatment to patients who are in the most need and who are most likely to benefit (2-3). In 2001 Italian Ministry of Health funded the Surgical Waiting List InfoSystem (SWALIS) Project (4,5) by €200,000. In 2002, following Australian experience (6), Italian Government approved 4 urgency related groups (URGs) for admission to elective surgery (7), integrating the First In First Out (FIFO) admission rule presently followed.