Roberto Papa
1* 
1 Head of Quality, Risk Management and Health Technology Innovation Unit, Department of Staff, Aou Delle Marche, Ancona, Italy
Abstract
Care pathways (CPs)—formally defined in Italy as Percorsi Diagnostico-Terapeutici Assistenziali (PDTA)—have long been a cornerstone of Italy’s community-based healthcare reorganisation. Defined by the European Pathway Association as complex interventions for shared decision-making and the organisation of care for a defined patient group, CPs remain vulnerable to a systematic gap between potential and actual performance. This Perspective proposes the Readiness Reading Matrix (RRM), a logical framework intersecting Donabedian’s structure-process-outcome triad with four readiness domains: interprofessional collaboration, lean standardisation, care continuity, and technological maturity, featuring patient co-design as a transversal axis. The RRM situates three previously disconnected international references—the Healthcare Readiness Index, the Telemedicine Readiness Inventory for Facilities, and the WHO’s SARA tool—within a single conceptual architecture. This approach offers a systemic, rather than merely comparative, evaluation of health-system readiness. The framework is presented here as a reference architecture pending empirical validation, and is illustrated through an applied scenario.