(cont. from § 7) The organization of health and medical care (cont. SoU16)

Christofer Bergenblock (C)

Mr. Speaker! First, I would like to move for approval of the Center Party's reservation 2 under point 1 regarding the organization and financing of health and medical care.

For the Center Party, the goal is that we should have equal and accessible healthcare throughout the country. The accessibility and quality of the care should not be affected by where you live; whether you live in rural areas or in a large city, the care must be close, good, and accessible. But that is not the case today. It affects how often one seeks care and what care one receives. Fundamentally, it is about how the care is organized and how the resources are distributed.

Centerpartiet wants to see a clear development of primary care, eliminate the surgical queues and strengthen resources in our rural areas.

The hub, Mr. Speaker, in Swedish healthcare is primary care. It is there that one should turn first as a patient, it is there that one should have a doctor that one recognizes, and it is there that the assessment should be made as to whether one needs specialist care or not.

The prerequisite for this to work is that primary care is accessible and close to the patient. But that is not the case to a sufficiently high degree today. Two out of three patients say that they want a fixed doctor contact, but only one out of three patients experience having one. In our rural areas, it is only one out of five patients who experience having a fixed doctor contact. This is, of course, not reasonable.

When the distances to healthcare become longer, there is also a risk that visits will become fewer, which can lead to diseases remaining untreated or not being detected in time. Swedish healthcare needs a policy to make care accessible and fill in the white spots on the map.

Centerpartiet therefore wants to introduce a new part within primary care, which we have chosen to call rural doctors. In practice, it is about small doctor-led units that, at a minimum, can consist of a doctor and a nurse, which shall cover where it is sparse between the health centers today. The point itself is that one therefore does not need all the competencies and resources that are otherwise required at a full-fledged health center with the specialist functions one must have there.

Accessibility to the health centers must also look different in different places in our country. We in Centerpartiet therefore embrace the technical and digital development. With the help of self-monitoring and digital connectivity, the patient can get in contact with their doctor either directly at home or via smaller clinics. We also want to see that the expertise at the pharmacies is utilized in a significantly better way than what is happening today, which would not least be good for the care in our rural areas.

By giving pharmacists the opportunity to extend prescriptions, dispense certain prescription medicines directly through a pharmaceutical range, and introduce remote pharmacy services, the healthcare system would be relieved. In the long run, we also want to look at the possibility of performing vaccinations at pharmacies and letting pharmacies function as digital hubs to the health centers in locations where the distances are long.

Mr. Speaker! The core of Swedish healthcare is, as has been said, primary care. But when one needs help from specialist care, one should receive it within a reasonable time. Just as when the parliamentary term began, the queues to specialist care are still illegally long in Sweden. In February, there were 49,917 patients who had waited more than 90 days for surgery or other measures. This is admittedly a decrease compared to four years ago, but an entirely unacceptable and furthermore illegal result.

To address this, the Center Party wants to strengthen patients' power in the system. Today, as a patient, one must wait for the care guarantee's 90 days to have passed before having the right to turn to another healthcare provider to have one's operation performed. We want to give a patient who has received a referral that power from day one. By making information about the care queues and the quality of care available via 1177, the patient can personally choose whether they want the operation to be performed in their own home region or if they want to turn to a healthcare provider in another region where the waiting times are shorter. In this way, a greater dynamic is created in the system than today, and patients do not need to wait 90 days to be able to turn to a faster healthcare provider.

Mr. Speaker! In conclusion, I cannot help but raise the question of the healthcare system's organization at an overall level. The care shall, of course, continue to be managed by our 21 regions. There, as a citizen, one has direct proximity to the decision-makers who govern the care.

Throwing our healthcare into a gigantic reorganization chaos for ten years ahead by nationalizing it would be a complete catastrophe for Swedish health and medical care. It would above all hit our rural areas and countryside hard. If the 350,000 employees of the healthcare system were to be governed by a director-general in Stockholm, it would not benefit the countryside and even less the countryside. We would likely see a wave of closures of unprecedented proportions when it comes to small hospitals and healthcare units sweeping through our country. Therefore, it is reassuring that six of the eight parties have said a firm no to this chaos.

There are, however, certain areas, Mr. Speaker, where greater national governance is needed than today to increase equality across the country. These include screening, pharmaceuticals, vaccinations, skills supply, dimensioning of educational places, and not least responsibility for airborne ambulance transports. The latter is a particularly important issue in order to be able to provide rapid access to ambulances even in our sparsely populated areas and rural regions. But these changes have been delayed due to the investigation on a total nationalization of healthcare.

(cont. § 11)

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)