The specialist magazine Sjukhusläkaren, which is published by the professional association Sjukhusläkarna, has reviewed the overcrowding in 14 hospitals in Sweden. The results show that overcrowded departments, i.e. where the occupancy rate is over 100 percent, is common.
Sometimes it lasts for several months. In addition, the occupancy rate in some weeks, in some departments, is over 200 percent. This means that the department has twice as many admitted patients as there is actually room and staff for.
– We see this situation with constant overcrowding as a huge problem – both for patient safety and for our work environment, says Elin Karlsson, chairman of Sjukhusläkarna and surgeon.
A nursing home is both a physical place, a bed, and enough staff to care for the person who is there. When hospitals take in more patients than there are care places for, this means that the staff must be “diluted” for more patients than they actually have time for.
SKR’s statistics are not as alarming
The organization Sweden’s municipalities and regions, SKR, also keeps statistics on the overcrowding in care. However, they do not count in the same way as the newspaper Sjukhusläkaren did in its review. SKR counts the number of overcrowding per 100 available care places. In their statistics for the whole country in September 2022, it is seen that the hospitals had 6.7 overcrowding per 100 care places. This is now being criticized by Sjukhusläkarna, who believe that SKR’s statistics do not reflect the doctors’ everyday life.
– We wonder how it is possible to produce such a stylized picture of reality, which neither matches the hospital doctor’s statistics nor our experiences, says Elin Karlsson.
– Our figures are transparent, and the model for producing them is transparent. We perceive that we have a robust model that can be compared between regions, over time. But our statistics do not claim to give the whole picture, says SKR’s head of health care Emma Spak.