HUS year 2022: Access to treatment and waiting times
There were multiple factors contributing to the burden on specialized healthcare in the year under review, and this was reflected in access to treatment. Under these difficult circumstances, not all patients received the care they needed in a timely manner.
Clearing the backlog caused by the coronavirus pandemic has been a challenge. Declining availability of nursing staff and the industrial action that occurred in spring 2022 complicated access to non-urgent care in particular.
Care needs assessments
Under the Health Care Act, a care needs assessment for a patient must be performed within three months of the hospital receiving the patient’s referral. At the end of 2022, there were just under 32,000 patients waiting for a care needs assessment; one in four of them had been waiting for more than three months. Analyzed by specialty, there were particularly many such patients in surgery and eye diseases.
Administrative recording practices related to access to treatment were revised in spring 2022 to ensure that the indicators for patients’ access to treatment are consistent and comparable.
Waiting times for surgical and other procedures
The number of patients waiting for surgical procedures, other procedures or ambulatory surgery remained high in 2022. The total number of patients waiting for surgical procedures, other procedures or ambulatory surgery as at the end of 2022 was 23,533, of whom 4993 had been waiting for more than six months. This total number of patients had increased by about 3,200.
The average waiting time for non-urgent surgical procedures or inpatient care was 88 days, and the average waiting time for ambulatory surgery was 58 days.