Over half of the patients think they are too ill-informed - Aftenposten

Four out of ten patients find that hospitals do not work well enough with GP and local health services.

12 494 patients were admitted to Norwegian hospitals last year responded to an extensive questionnaire about their experiences after their hospital stay.

There are “huge improvement” in terms of the interaction between hospitals and other health services, strikes Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services firm.

• 40 percent of patients experienced “not at all”, “little extent” or “to some extent” that the hospital is working well with your GP if they were hospitalized.
• 42 percent said they experienced good enough degree of cooperation between hospitals and home care / other municipal services.

Several patients commented that the hospital had not sent the necessary paperwork to the doctor who would continue the follow-up after discharge. This meant that the patient felt unsafe, and also added that patients increasingly have to take responsibility for yourself to get proper treatment.

In one case had to inform the patient about the disease, when the doctor was not “specialist” on the patient’s diagnosis. As a solution to this suggest more patients that the hospital is better to give the doctor information needed when a patient is discharged from hospital. 7000 patients have come with their own comments and suggestions in the survey.

Gets know too little

Also when it comes to information after discharge are many who are not happy.

• 52 percent of patients believe that they were not well enough informed about the problems they could expect to receive in the post-hospitalization.
• 49 percent of patients believe that they did not receive enough information about what they could do in the event of relapse.

– It’s nothing new that collaboration between health services and hospitals squeak, said patient representative in Oslo and Akershus, Knut Fredrik Thorne.

Coordination Reform has led to the municipality assumes responsibility for discharged patients ready from the first day, Thormas mean not working well enough.

– Nurses come to me and say that they will receive discharge letters fourteen days they were transferred to the patient. This could be serious if the discharge summary includes information about treatment from the first day. The information is required to accompany the patient. If it is to be sent by fax, it goes without saying that one lacks modern IT tools to get this to work quickly, he said.

not understand what the doctor says

There are also many who are unable to meet the information needs while they are hospitalized. One in five patients felt that doctors “not at all”, “little extent” or “to some extent” spoke so that patients understand them. One of three patients felt they did not tell doctors what they thought was important for their own condition, and just as many felt that doctors were less interested in the patients’ descriptions of their own situation.

Almost half of the patients reported that there was one doctor who had primary responsibility for their stay.

The typical patient with the worst experiences of information during the stay in hospital is over 70 years old and unmarried.

– Patients regularly come to me and say that they did not understand some of what the doctor said, and the doctor listened to what they had to say, says Thorne.

He believes an excessive respect for doctors is why older patients are least satisfied.

– Think nearest doctor is God

– We see a generation shift where the oldest patients have tremendous respect for the doctor. If the patient believes the doctor closest to God, and your doctor may think it yourself, it is not easy to complain about the lack of information, he said.

Patient Ombudsman urges disgruntled patients to appeal.

– After Patient Rights Act, all patients right on informed consent to accept or refuse medical care. This is the doctor’s responsibility. In addition, information provided to suit your needs. If you get this, you should take it up with the department, contact the patient ombudsman or complaint directly to the County, said Thorne.

One in ten believe they had to wait too long

46 percent experienced latency, but stated that they waited too long before receiving treatment. 28 percent of planned hospitalized patients reported that they had to wait too long before they got an offer at the hospital. Of those, 10 percent said that they had waited “too long”, and 18 percent reported that they had expected “quite long.”

The most positive experiences in the survey concerned the patient, nursing staff, doctors and safeguarding families.

patients admitted to general wards had better experiences with health care professionals (doctors and nursing staff) than patients admitted in 2011. Otherwise there was no change from the previous year.

top scorer on patient

Patient Perceived patient receives the highest score in 2012. The results showed that 89 percent of hospitalized patients “little” or “not at all” experienced treatment failure during hospitalization. Despite the fact that the majority of the hospitalized patients have not experienced failure treatment, two and three percent have experienced failure treatment, respectively “very large extent” and “largely”. This suggests that there is room for improvement in Norwegian hospitals when the patient experienced.

12 percent of the patients had also experienced getting unnecessary damage or problem caused by surgery or examination, while 8 percent of patients had experienced failure medicated. 49 percent were not satisfied with the way the staff took care of the error.

Large variations

There are wide variations between hospitals in Southern and Eastern, according to Knowledge Centre.

Patients worst experiences with hospital Østfold and Akershus University Hospital (Ahus).

Patients at Østfold Hospital reported poorer experiences with nursing staff and physicians and the hospital’s organization of work, compared to the national average. Patients at Akershus have less experience with the nursing staff, the hospital caring for relatives and hospital standards, compared to the other hospitals in Norway.

Last year’s patients were not as pleased with the Telemark Hospital in Skien and Porsgrunn in collaboration with municipal health services compared with 2011 patients. For Lovisenberg Deaconess Hospital patients have poorer experiences of how they were prepared for the time after discharge than patients did in 2011.

Secretary: – Not good enough

– results of the survey are a clear signal from the patients that it is not good enough when it comes to information and interaction, says State Secretary Anne Grethe Erlandsen (H) in the Ministry of Health and Care Services.

- We need to be even better at providing information while patients are in hospital, and develop new solutions in collaboration with patients. The greater use of the internet and written information is needed, says Erlandsen.

She points out that 2012 was the first year of collaboration reform, and that it is therefore even more important to see how patients experience their cooperation.

– There is much about getting better now, with the new electronic information exchange between hospitals and primary care physicians, she said.

LHL: – Worried COPD patients

– We are concerned about the lack of monitoring of patients after discharge, says Mari Larsen, Deputy Secretary General of the Norwegian Heart and Lung.

– We are particularly concerned when it comes to COPD patients, which we feel are not getting good enough follow-up to the municipal health service. This leads to frequent re-hospitalization in a hospital, and patients receive too little information about what they should do for themselves. We want the health authorities take our proposals seriously and establish better cooperation between hospitals and doctor. In this way we can create safety for the patient when they entered the hospital and going home to after treatment.