Are the Italian municipal registries of advance directives going in the right direction?

During the past legislatures several bills on patient’s consent and advance directives (ADs) were debated in Italy, and currently three and five draft laws were presented to the Senate (number S.5, S.13, and S.443), and to the Chamber of Deputies (number C.1142, C.1298, C.1432, C.2229, and C.2264)3 respectively. Pending legislation, since 2009 many Italian municipalities established Registries in which residents can consign their ADs and/or subscribe that they made a written AD. To collect data on Registry availability and characteristics, we considered the 97 municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants of the Emilia Romagna Region (4,377,487 inhabitants). We found that, within March 2014, 34 municipalities (accounting for the 49% of the regional population) had an ADs Registry.