Helse Nord has 1,000 unfilled positions. Many of these are filled by professionals who either work overtime or are hired for an expensive fee from temp agencies. The unfilled positions can be found both at the larger hospitals in Northern Norway and at the smaller ones. Furthermore, the treatment queues are too long, and in the annual report for 2022 on package progress for cancer patients, Helse Nord comes out significantly worse than the other health regions. I think it would be downright irresponsible not to take these flashing warning lights seriously. Irresponsible towards patients and relatives in the north, and irresponsible towards our professionals. The process in Helse Nord has of course aroused interest, both in the population and among professionals. That’s understandable. Everyone in Norway expects our joint health service to provide security and health care when they need it. This is precisely why we also need a broad debate on how to ensure a sustainable health and care service in the north for the future. There are many and strong opinions on the matter, but it seems that we all agree on one thing: Something must be done. We cannot continue as we are today. Or as a number of municipal superintendents wrote in a chronicle for news Ytring recently: “The road we are on now is not passable very much anymore”. Our professionals must simply be allowed to use their expertise in a smarter and better way, for the benefit of the patients. I fully agree with the description the municipal doctors give in the chronicle. We need a health service that can take care of an increasing number of elderly people and an increasing number of chronically ill people, and we need to take care of the emergency medical service to give the inhabitants of the north security and good health care when illness and injury occur. But then we also have to put up with some stones being left unturned. Helse Nord has set up five working groups which have come up with their proposals. I understand that many people are now experiencing uncertainty because we are talking about changes in the current organisation. I also understand that proposals for changes in emergency functions are perceived as particularly unsafe. It is then important to remember that what has now been proposed is a proposal. No decisions will be taken that have not been thoroughly assessed for risks and consequences and sent for broad consultation. The municipal supervisors are important voices in this work. It is precisely what the municipal health service and the hospitals get together that determines how well we manage the major change in society when we now have more elderly people than children and young people. Many need help in and around where they live. In order to achieve that, Helse Nord must regain control over resources, and the health region’s overall offer must be as good as in the rest of the country, which is also stated by the Hurdal platform. The Health Personnel Commission points to the challenge of increased specialisation. A development with increasingly narrow specialties makes it difficult to organize healthcare services that reach widely. Here we need to further develop the service and the specialization courses we have today. I will soon present the National Health and Cooperation Plan where I will present new measures to succeed in the restructuring requested by the municipal doctors in their chronicle. It is a report to the Storting which sees the entire health service in context and which follows up both the Health Personnel Commission, the Hospital Committee and also the expert committee for the important general practitioner service in the municipalities. I look forward to that. Meeting the development will require new thinking and a willingness to look at regulations, forms of organization and forms of financing. Finally, I want to repeat a message that is important to me: I have no plans to empty a single hospital in the north. But I want to fill them with the right content, content that provides a safe and equal high-quality healthcare service, also in the future. The government’s ambition is clear: We want a specialist health service where patients in the north have access to as good treatment as patients elsewhere in the country. Neither patients nor professionals should have to go south to get what they need. It is an ambition that I am absolutely sure that the municipal superintendents share with me. We must ensure a sustainable health and care service for the best for both professionals, patients and relatives. No hospital should be emptied, but they must be filled with the right contents. Not centralization, but interaction. Read the chronicle:
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Better interaction and continued good emergency preparedness – Statement
