Strategies of an Italian Spa Company at the Dawn of Mass Tourism. The Recovery of S.A. Terme e Grandi Alberghi di Sirmione in the Second Postwar Period

In the aftermath of WWII, the Italian tourism sector, as the rest of the national economy, had to undertake a complex and crucial phase of reconstruction. This essay investigates the second postwar period focusing on the case study of S.A. Terme e Grandi Alberghi di Sirmione. Using documentary material from different archives, the aim is to reconstruct the strategies adopted by the spa company to revive its tourism activities, contextualizing them in the developments of the Garda area. In a crucial phase, when western tourism was acquiring a mass dimension, the new shareholders started afresh from the reconstruction of the accommodation facilities following logics of diversification and innovation

Resuming European Détente and European Integration

International audienceFrance and the INF Treaty In 1987, the two superpowers signed the INF Treaty, thus officially ending the Euromissile crisis. Though neither the French President nor any other French representative sat at the negotiation table, France itself was present-for throughout the Euromissile crisis, French diplomacy had played a decisive role. Pursuing his own Ostpolitik, in which he always took a tough line with Moscow, President François Mitterrand had actively encouraged Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev to resume the U. S.-Soviet dialogue on détente and disarmament, which had come to a standstill at the beginning of the 1980s. Mitterrand had held extensive conversations with both Reagan and Gorbachev in 1984/85 and had offered both of them advice on how to get back into meaningful negotiations.1 This was important to Mitterrand's own policy aims. The return to confrontation between the superpowers at the end of the 1970s considerably reduced France's room for maneuver in the field of East-West cooperation. It also hindered progress towards European integration. So, from the French perspective, any improvement in the area of détente and disarmament between the two superpowers and any steps forward towards ending the Euromissile crises would make better conditions for cooperation within Europe-both between the Eas

Mortality and Length of Stay in a Veterans Administration Hospital and Private Sector Hospitals Serving a Common Market

OBJECTIVE: To compare severity-adjusted in-hospital mortality and length of stay (LOS) in a Veterans Administration (VA) hospital and private sector hospitals serving the same health care market. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. SETTING: A large VA hospital and 27 private sector hospitals in the same metropolitan area. PATIENTS: Consecutive VA (N = 1,960) and private sector (N = 157,147) admissions in 1994 to 1995 with 9 high-volume diagnoses. MEASUREMENTS: Severity of illness was measured using validated multivariable models that were based on data abstracted from medical records. Outcomes were adjusted for severity and compared in VA and private sector patients using multiple logistic or linear regression analysis. MAIN RESULTS: Unadjusted mortality was similar in VA and private sector patients (5.0% vs 5.6%, respectively; P = .26), although mean LOS was longer in VA patients (12.7 vs 7.0 days; P < .001). Adjusting for severity, the odds of death in VA patients was similar (odds ratio [OR] 1.07; 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 0.74 to 1.54; P = .73). However, a larger proportion of deaths in VA patients occurred later during hospitalization (P < .001), and the odds of death in VA patients were actually lower (P < .05) in analyses limited to deaths during the first 7 (OR, 0.56) or 14 (OR, 0.63) days. Adjusted LOS was longer (P < .001) in VA patients for all 9 diagnoses. CONCLUSIONS: If the current findings generalizable to other markets, hospital mortality, a widely used performance measure, may be similar or lower in VA and private sector hospitals serving the same markets. The longer LOS of VA patients may reflect differences in practice patterns and may be an important source of bias in comparisons of VA and private sector hospitals