The Regional Council of the Capital Region of Denmark today discussed a consultation response to the Healthcare Structure Commission's report (link opens in new window). Politicians have supplemented the consultation response from Danish Regions (link opens in new window).
There is strong support for the joint statement from the five regions, and we are ready to take on new additional tasks to help future-proof the healthcare system. However, certain special considerations apply to Greater Copenhagen if politicians in Christiansborg decide to go with model 1, which entails more regions and thus that Greater Copenhagen is split into three or more health and care regions.
Crazy to start again from scratch
Regional Council Chairman Lars Gaardhøj (Social Democrats) fears that 17 years of building a strong and efficient organisation will be lost - and this will affect the region's strong political and managerial focus on reducing waiting times.
"It's crazy to replace a strong administration with three or four new ones that will have to be built up from scratch at a time when we're short of staff, administration costs need to be reduced, and we have new tasks that still require close coordination with 29 municipalities of very different sizes, from Denmark's largest, with over 650,000 citizens, to one of the smallest, with fewer than 15,000 citizens," says Lars Gaardhøj.
He is concerned about the implications of having three or four small regions with four acute care hospitals, a national hospital (Rigshospitalet) and an island hospital to cover the hospital needs of the capital, including Bornholm, without support from a common administration or politicians elected in different parts of the region.
The regions have strengthened treatment quality
The consultation response stresses that the hospital system has experienced a major quality boost since establishment of the regions in 2007. And Deputy Chairman of the Capital Region of Denmark Christoffer Buster Reinhardt (Conservative) does not want to jeopardise the good results.
"The ambition at that time to have five strong regions to ensure high treatment quality, efficiency and short waiting times has been fulfilled. The quality boost has led to significantly lower mortality rates in cancer and cardiac care. The high level of professionalism, economies of scale and cross-cutting planning have also benefited many other patients - for example, people with diseases of the urinary tract, chest, circulatory system, blood, joints (arthritis), connective tissue and spine," says Christoffer Buster Reinhardt, who is also concerned that waiting lists will lengthen again.
Struggle for staff and medical specialities
The Regional Council can see the logic of more care regions, provided a large number of tasks are moved to them in a future structure. But on the other hand, it would also make sense not to split up strong organisations just as new tasks need to be tackled and managed.
The second Deputy Chairman, Thomas Rohden (Social Liberal), is concerned about how such new units would operate in an already tight labour market.
"Competition for staff can easily arise, and there is no incentive to look at the best overall use of staff skills and payrolls. The same inappropriate competition can occur in attempts to attract the most interesting specialities. Admittedly it's before my time, but experience from the old counties suggests that there's a great risk that it will affect individual patients, because treatment quality and efficiency drop," says Thomas Rohden.
The consultation response mentions several areas that will be challenged by a split - including the emergency area with fast response times, good regional coverage by ambulances and medical vehicles (supported by a united regional and municipal political focus on the most sparsely populated areas), and close collaboration between the 1813 emergency hotline and emergency departments.
Other examples are medicine management by pharmacies and professionalization of IT, finance, energy optimization, renovation, hospital planning, HR, etc. at administrative centres.
There is also the systematic political and administrative work to reduce waiting times by rescheduling treatments and utilizing capacity across the board. It is essential for the overall healthcare system to function appropriately and cost-effectively. These are large and robust organisations whose core tasks have been developed and refined over many years.
Further information
- Public Relations Unit in the Capital Region of Denmark, tel.: +45 7020 9588/ presse@regionh.dk