The employees and the entire health enterprise Finnmarkssykehuset have reached a red line. The alarm call does not come this time from the hospital’s corridors, but from the company’s own director, Ole Hope. The director’s diagnosis is that years of measures to bring the economy into balance have completely failed. The wrong medicine has been prescribed. – Hiring stop, purchase stop, travel stop, employment stop, overtime stop and so on. Director Ole Hope has made several unpopular cuts at Finnmark Hospital, but so far nothing has helped. Photo: Gunnar Sætra / news These are measures that are best suited for short periods to gain control over individual costs. These are not measures that have a lasting effect, stated Hope to his board this week. – The time for the aforementioned measures must be over. Director Ole Hope of Finnmarkssykehuset now has one month to present a plan for how to get control of the finances. Photo: Stian Strøm / news Breaking point reached For a whole year, Hope has been fighting to get the finances for Finnmark’s two hospitals and the company’s services around the county under control. He has not managed that. When the year is over, he will probably have a deficit of over NOK 150 million. With the board’s blessing, Hope has now been allowed to redraw the entire organization of Finnmarkssykehuset. – If we do not take comprehensive measures, the organization will collapse, says Hope. The reason is that employees cannot be expected to work even longer days. The hospital in Kirkenes is also in the red. This building is also relatively new and modern. Photo: Kristina Kalinina / news For many employees The director’s conclusion is that Finnmarkssykehuset has an organization that is bigger and more expensive than finances and the patient base indicate that it should be. The county has just under 75,000 inhabitants. The health institution has too many basic staff. Too few patients are treated. The administration is too big and there are too many managers. The money runs out. The hospital in Hammerfest has a loss of NOK 100 million on its operations. Kirkenes hospital is up to NOK 50 million. In contrast, Klinikk Alta balances, but Alta will also enter Hope’s new organizational chart. From next year, operations at Finnmark Hospital will be reduced by NOK 300 million a year. Storting politicians Irene Ojala and Ole Hope greeted each other earlier this year outside the town hall in Alta. Then both she and other residents demonstrated against cuts in the health service. Photo: Stian Strøm / news Want to copy Scotland While the board is now waiting for an outline for a radical restructuring of the organization of the health company, representative of the Storting Irene Ojala believes that the time has passed for health companies as a model. In 2021, Ojala made a snap election with the Patient Focus list, and now sits on the Storting’s health and care committee. She points to Scotland, which also had its health enterprises. – They took the hospitals back into public administration. When we have tried the model with health enterprises for 22 years and see where this has taken us. Then we actually have to lay down our cards and say that we have not succeeded. We have to do something new and, for example, see how they do it in Scotland, says Ojala to news. Irene Ojala believes that the enterprise model must be scrapped in Finnmark. Photo: Private Published 31.08.2024, at 10.21
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The health organization in Finnmark may collapse because the economic crisis is out of control – news Troms and Finnmark
