HUS year 2023: Patient care in figures

In specialist medical care, we treated 569,404 individual patients in our own services and outsourced services. The number of patients in specialist medical care was 3.2% higher than in the previous year.

We received nearly 600,000 items of customer feedback in 2023. The NPS score for HUS as a whole has increased from 64 to 79 between 2020 and 2023. We began to deploy a new customer feedback system towards the end of the year. This will allow us to better leverage feedback in the development of our operations.

The comparable operating volume of medical services was 0.8% over budget while showing an increase of 3.9% on the previous year.

We received about 356,200 elective referrals in 2023, up 5.2% on the previous year. We received 1,420 elective referrals per weekday on average, as opposed to 1,340 in 2022. 

Continuing decrease in emergency department visits and childbirths

The number of emergency department visits for specialist medical care (255,896) decreased by 1% on the previous year. On average, there were 700 such visits every day. 

The number of births has continued to decline in Uusimaa at a rate faster than expected. There were 15,521 childbirths in 2022 but only 15,285 in 2023, down 1.5% on the previous year. 

The number of babies delivered at HUS hospitals was 15,493, down 1.6% on the previous year. HUS has four maternity hospitals: the Women’s Hospital and Espoo, Hyvinkää and Lohja Hospitals. 

Read more:
Birth rate decreasing faster than expected (in Finnish) 

Increased number of surgeries – less intensive care

A total of 86,849 surgical operations were performed at HUS in 2023. One third of these were emergency surgery. Operating room occupancy and the number of procedures increased on the previous year. 

There were ongoing difficulties in organizing surgical operations because of the personnel shortage. Both surgical nurses and anesthesiologists were in short supply. We were able to recruit surgical nurses during the year under review, but we remain short-staffed 

Early in the year, intensive care was relocated from Töölö Hospital to the Intensive Care and Intermediate Care Unit at the new Bridge Hospital in Meilahti.  We provided a total of 21,840,267 minutes of intensive care for adult patients at the Bridge Hospital, the Tower Hospital, Jorvi Hospital and the intermediate care ward at Hyvinkää Hospital, about 6% less than in 2022. 

The average treatment period per patient in intensive care decreased from 3.7 days to 3.3 days.  There were only a few coronavirus patients in intensive care.

During the year under review, 475 abdominal and thoracic transplantations were performed, the highest number per year ever. Fifteen transplantations were performed on children. The increase in the number of organ transplantations is due to systematic development of organ donations in Finland and close Nordic cooperation. 

Read more:
Record year for organ transplantations and organ donations in 2023 (in Finnish) 

Maisa is already being used by 70% of customers

We achieved the usage rate goal for the Maisa portal in 2023, meaning that it is already being used by 70% of our customers. 

Maisa is the e-transaction portal of the Apotti patient information system where customers can manage their social welfare and healthcare matters online with the assistance of a dedicated professional or care team and can also manage the affairs of a loved one with the necessary authorization. The service can be accessed on a mobile device as well. 

Read more:
Maisa is already being used by 70% of HUS customers (in Finnish) 

There were 2.43 million booked appointments during the year under review in all, of which 17.5% were remote appointments. The number of remote appointments increased by 13% in somatic medicine on the previous year but decreased by 9% in psychiatry, the number of remote appointments being about 74,000 and about 232,000, respectively.