Healthcare In Sweden
Amanda Wilson
NUR301 Transition to Professional Nursing
Professor Lori Dowell
10/24/12

Healthcare in Sweden
There are pros and cons for any health care system researched. Obviously no country in the world has perfected the job of balancing supply and demand in a cost effect manner. Everyone has complaints about how the government runs things in their country and everyone has horror stories about how they have been treated at some point by the medical profession. After all of my research I believe that Sweden has incorporated many good aspects of service while only having a few downfalls. With continued reform Sweden’s healthcare system could become a highly efficient system.
Overview
The main objective of
Another wait time guarantee has been made, called the “0-7-90-90” rule (Anell et al, pg.44). This means that a person gets instant (0) access to health care, consultation with a general practitioner within a week (7), consultation with a specialist within three months (90), and no more than three months between diagnosis and treatment (Anell et al, pg.45). A concern is that even with the assurance there are still not enough doctors to meet the need. For example, one city in Sweden with 200,000 people only has one specialist in mammography and it is reported that within a few years most Swedish women will not have access to mammography. (Larson, pg.22)
Health of population At present, Sweden has one of the oldest populations in the world with a life expectancy on average of 83.2 years for women and 79.1 years for men (Anell et al, pg. 27-28). Diseases of the circulatory system account for 40% of all deaths, with the second leading cause of death being cancer (Anell, pg. 17). The largest portion of funding is allocated for hospital care but the focus is shifting toward preventing disease before it becomes a hospital-sized issue.
In April 2003 the “Public Health Objectives” Bill was adopted which focuses on initiatives for primary prevention as opposed to secondary or tertiary prevention (Anell et al, pg. 10). The goal was to lighten the load of the medical professionals and allow them to focus more time on those that truly needed the help by