The planning and programming healthcare and social activities is increasingly considered a crucial for the search of economic and social rationality in the allocation process of the resources. Moreover, healthcare and social services need to be considered not as two separate area of public and private intervention, but as two synergic aspects. The widespread concept of health, indeed, is not considered as a sectorial set of services of expertise of public sanitary companies, but the fruit of a convergence between prevention and interventions and public, private for-profit and private non-profit entities. Whether planning and programming have become a routine in the management practices, less developed, or even absent, is the moment of control. To this extent, public managers and practitioners do not have the information to evaluate the performance and the usefulness of services and programs.
The objective of the present paper is that to verify methodological and operational means, and the managerial implications in introducing a comprehensive system of planning and control, with particular reference to the "Health Plans" (Piani per la Salute - PPS) in the Province of Ferrara. The reason for the choice is tied up to the recent introduction of the PPS, that allowed the researchers to observe and take part to all phases of the process. The conducted study, from 2001 to 2005, has allowed to underline the operational and methodological tools through which it has been built a system of planning and integrated control.