Sweden is great - but a huge challenge is the long waiting lists for healthcare.
One solution is smarter care, for example through targeted interventions, for older people," says Marit Vaagen, Sirona's CEO and founder.
- "Right now, we have unacceptable queues in many areas, including for life-threatening diseases such as cancer," says Marit Vaagen. Eliminating queues and providing patients with timely care requires good staffing and efficient care processes.
Streamlining healthcare processes is something of a specialty for Sirona, which works on this on a daily basis on behalf of both private providers and several regions. This may involve, for example, procuring private alternatives to carry out extra MRI scans at odd times. Or, like some airlines, overbooking mammograms because statistics show that not everyone who is called shows up.
But perhaps the area where the greatest efficiencies can be made is in the care of the elderly. At present, Swedish emergency departments receive a much higher proportion of elderly patients than in many other countries, which is holding up the system.
- This should not be the case, the emergency room is not the best place for the elderly. Older people should be caught before they need to go to the emergency room," says Marit Vaagen.
She points out that there is a gap between municipalities, regions, primary care and hospital care in many places in Sweden, but that it is possible to create better solutions for older people. Sirona, for example, has worked with all different parts of the healthcare system to create better solutions for the elderly, where regions, municipalities and private actors can implement solutions individually and together.
- Some regions have introduced elderly clinics, which are an important foundation that can be further developed. Primary care can be complemented by elderly care teams or mobile teams and flows between them and hospital care can be organized. The Uppsala Region is at the forefront of targeted interventions for older people.
According to Marit Vaagen, working in this way will reduce the number of readmissions of older people, which is proof that we are on the right track. This in turn means less workload in hospitals, which creates a better working environment.
The care queues we have now create suffering and poor quality of life. But they can be eliminated by working through the processes.
