A more accessible, modern, and sustainable healthcare model
CDS – Casa della Salute was born from a personal intuition of Marco Fertonani, founder and CEO of the company, who, after discovering in Spain a more modern, technological and accessible private healthcare model, decided to replicate it in Italy. “I realized – he explains – that technology and efficiency improvements would make it possible to offer patients better services, reduced waiting times and competitive prices.”
CDS opened its first clinic in Busalla (GE) in 2014. In the startup phase, the primary goal was to perfect the system by working on the layout of facilities, operational flows, digitalization and speed of service. The model worked and, in the following years, the company opened new outpatient clinics between Liguria and Sardinia. The turning point came in 2020, when Italmobiliare entered the company’s share capital. “Italmobiliare gave us a decisive boost, providing not only resources but, above all, the managerial method and professional skills needed to evolve and grow the model,” emphasizes Fertonani.
From that moment on, growth accelerated and in just a few years CDS went from 8 to 40 clinics distributed across Liguria, Piedmont and Sardinia. Today, the network employs 1,000 doctors and around 650 employees, providing 1.2 million services per year to over 500,000 patients. This growth has also been supported by structural dynamics such as population ageing and increasing attention to prevention, which place the healthcare system before new challenges. “In the healthcare sector, the demand for care exceeds supply – Fertonani observes – Our duty is to respond to patients’ needs, also through new synergies between public and private sectors.” To do this, CDS has chosen a countercyclical strategy: “Patients look for services that are easy to reach – the manager explains – We have therefore opened many clinics in small towns; in this way, we can offer a proximity service.”
Another strength of the company is having successfully applied the efficiency of industrial processes to healthcare. For this reason, most clinics are built from scratch, so that spaces, paths and workflows can be designed from the outset to ensure quality and speed. On this basis the role of technology is built, which becomes a key element of the operating model. “Technology allows doctors to focus solely on patients and care – underlines Marco Fertonani – while technicians and administrative staff oversee all the other phases of the process, making the patient journey faster and more orderly.” With a constant focus on improvement, in 2024 CDS also introduced a platform dedicated to artificial intelligence applied to diagnostic imaging. As Fertonani explains, “AI allows us to halve image acquisition times while maintaining the same quality. It can also assist technicians in reporting, highlighting for example lesions that are sometimes invisible to the naked eye.” This is also an advantage for patients, because it translates into shorter exams, less time spent on the machines and greater accessibility for claustrophobic patients.
Alongside industrial evolution, CDS has built a structured sustainability path, with a focus on organization, quality and social responsibility. The company has obtained certifications such as B Corp, Legality Rating, and gender equality, and has created a CDS Academy for continuous training.
Looking to the future, the Group envisages growth based on three main directions: geographical expansion, greater operational scale and technological innovation. The plan includes consolidating its presence in existing areas and entering new regions, also through potential acquisitions. At the same time, CDS will continue to invest in digitalization, diagnostic technologies and AI applications to improve clinical effectiveness and patient experience. “We were born with a simple idea: to make healthcare more accessible, modern and sustainable – Fertonani concludes – Now we can bring this model to an even larger scale.”