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HEALTH

‘Send Swedes to Latvia for operations’

The Stockholm School of Economics in Riga is planning to start a Swedish-owned hospital in the Latvian capital in order to raise the standards of the country's hospitals and to remove some of the burden from the Swedish healthcare system.

Published: 20 January 2010 14:13 CET

Gunnar Ljungdahl, Senior Vice President of the Stockholm school’s majority-owned Riga offshoot, believes more education is needed when it comes to the administration of Latvian hospitals and said the Swedish system could function as a benchmark.

“The Latvian system has not improved since the Soviet Union; we could help them to work more effectively,” he told The Local.

The Stockholm School of Economics, a business school ranked 15th in Europe by the Financial Times, has an executive master programme concentrating on health care, Ljungdahl explained.

“Doctors used to be the ones running hospitals but this has changed. You can be a great doctor, but it doesn’t mean you’re skilled at administration.”

Apart from aiding Latvia’s healthcare sector, Ljungdahl hopes to speed up queue times for Swedish patients waiting in line for operations.

“The queues are long, and this could be a good alternative”.

“People might feel worried about leaving their country for an operation, but if their county council is involved they might feel more secure,” he said.

The Latvian ministry of health has now sent a letter to Swedish social minister Göran Hägglund with a proposal for co-operation.

According to Ljungdahl, Swedish health companies and county councils will be able to invest in the project.

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HEALTH

Lengthy waiting times at Danish hospitals not going away yet: minister

Danish Minister for the Interior and Health Sophie Løhde has warned that, despite increasing activity at hospitals, it will be some time before current waiting lists are reduced.

Published: 10 May 2023 15:09 CEST
Lengthy waiting times at Danish hospitals not going away yet: minister

The message comes as Løhde was set to meet with officials from regional health authorities on Wednesday to discuss the progress of an acute plan for the Danish health system, launched at the end of last year in an effort to reduce a backlog of waiting times which built up during the coronavirus crisis.

An agreement with regional health authorities on an “acute” spending plan to address the most serious challenges faced by the health services agreed in February, providing 2 billion kroner by the end of 2024.

READ ALSO: What exactly is wrong with the Danish health system?

The national organisation for the health authorities, Danske Regioner, said to newspaper Jyllands-Posten earlier this week that progress on clearing the waiting lists was ahead of schedule.

Some 245,300 operations were completed in the first quarter of this year, 10 percent more than in the same period in 2022 and over the agreed number.

Løhde said that the figures show measures from the acute plan are “beginning to work”.

“It’s positive but even though it suggests that the trend is going the right way, we’re far from our goal and it’s important to keep it up so that we get there,” she said.

“I certainly won’t be satisfied until waiting times are brought down,” she said.

“As long as we are in the process of doing postponed operations, we will unfortunately continue to see a further increase [in waiting times],” Løhde said.

“That’s why it’s crucial that we retain a high activity this year and in 2024,” she added.

Although the government set aside 2 billion kroner in total for the plan, the regional authorities expect the portion of that to be spent in 2023 to run out by the end of the summer. They have therefore asked for some of the 2024 spending to be brought forward.

Løhde is so far reluctant to meet that request according to Jyllands-Posten.

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