REPORT. The Swedish Agency for Health and Care Services Analysis has now presented the Government with its final report including a follow-up of the implementation of the Patient Act from 2015. The report’s heading, “An Act without Impact” [Lag utan genomslag] accurately summarises the findings of the report.
On 1 January 2015, Sweden’s new Patient Act entered into force. The Swedish Agency for Health and Care Services Analysis has followed up on the impact of the Act. Today, the Agency presented a final report to the Government concluding that the patient’s position is unchanged or has even been weakened since the Act was introduced. The causes are reported to be, firstly, that it is unclear how the health services are to implement the Act, and secondly, that there are no sanctions whatsoever for non-compliance. The Act is simply toothless. The Swedish Agency for Health and Care Services Analysis recommends a comprehensive strategy for strengthening the patients’ position:
“A complete package is needed: a strategy with a number of collaborated initiatives so that the health services can handle the challenges. But the law needs to be clarified so that it is clear who is responsible for what in the healthcare chain. Today it is unclear, for example, where the obligation to provide information lies. The Act needs more bite. This is an Act that the county councils need to prioritise more,” Fredrik Lennartsson, Executive Director of the Swedish Agency for Health and Care Services Analysis, tells Dagens Medicin.
Inger Ekman, Centre for Person-centred Care (GPCC), who was also interviewed as a basis for the report, agrees that the law must be binding, and notes that much of the content of the new report is consistent with the views she already expressed in the consultation and referral stage of the Act.
As commissioned by Vice-Chancellor Pam Fredman, GPCC coordinated the University of Gothenburg’s referral statement, which among other things pointed out that the then bill’s content did not go far enough in terms of the patient’s position within the health services. The Act includes the right to a “second opinion” and the right to receive information. But really strengthening the position of the patient within the health services requires that the patient also has the right to be listened to and to be involved as an equal party in the planning of their own care.
This was also expressed at the time of the Act entering into force in a debate article in Dagens Nyheter, “Listening to the patient makes healthcare more effective” [Att lyssna på patienten gör vården mer effektiv] . The article, written by Inger Ekman together with Håkan Hedman, patient representative in GPCC and Chairman of the Swedish Kidney Association, and Ann-Marie Wennberg, now hospital director of Sahlgrenska University Hospital, includes the following: “We want clarification of the obligation of the occupational groups involved, the healthcare professionals, to take the time to listen to their patient as a fellow human being and the expert on their own experience and daily life. This leads to cooperation and a more effective healthcare. The patient should be a partner with whom you can communicate and plan.”
GPCC’s evidence-based research shows that if you listen to the patient in a structured manner and involve them in the planning, this yields clear positive effects in terms of increased satisfaction, safer patients, shortened periods of care and also increased satisfaction among staff.
In an interview in Dagens Medicin, GPCC’s Irma Lindström Kjellberg also comments on the report.
Link to the Swedish Agency for Health and Care Services Analysis report “An Act without Impact” [Lag utan genomslag], evaluation of the Patient Act 2014-2017.
Link to Dagens Medicin interview with GPCC’s Irma Lindström Kjellberg.
