[Health profile of a population as a predictor of health resources utilization: results of the implementation of an epidemiologic model for needs analysis].

: The integration of the scientific researches in the assistance process is one of the most important challenges that is currently set to the health operators. In this paper a model for the health needs-assessment will be applied to verify if and how the prevalence of some classical risk factors for cardiovascular disease foretells mortality and hospitalisation episodes at 3 years, and if it could express the health need of that population. The "sanitary history" of 1704 subjects, enrolled in 1996 during the Brisighella Study, has been followed. We know the health profile of these subjects at 1996 and data about their hospitalizations, mortality, and general assistance from 1996 to 1999. In this population the risk of cardiovascular disease is inferior to that esteemed by the hospitalisation rate, attributable mostly to a little group of subjects with well-defined characteristics of exposure. The resources spent on a hospitalization do not adequately describe either the sanitary need nor the relief load and the "cost" associated to the disease. The methodology used allows to explore in detail the relative weight of the different subjects involved in the sanitary assistance in order to better reach the objective of producing the maximum quantity of benefits for the patient at the smallest possible quantity of risk.