Helsinki seeks to shift care for long-term patients to Social Services Department

Hospital wards to be transferred from Health Centre to Social Services at turn of year

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For the past two weeks a persistent rumour has been circulating in the hallways of Helsinki’s Myllypuro Hospital: plans have been laid to turn the hospital into a nursing home from the beginning of next year.
      “Many of the patients and their next of kind are extremely anguished about this”, says Klas Eriksson, who has been assisting his wife in the ward of the Myllypuro Hospital for the past ten years.
      His wife whispers from her wheelchair that she does not want any changes.
      Paula Kokkonen, Helsinki Deputy Mayor for Social and Health Services, offers words of assurance. If everything goes as planned with the change she is proposing, the Erikssons will not notice anything.
      From the beginning of 2010, the City of Helsinki wishes to transfer the care of more than a thousand long-term patients from the Health Centre to the Social Services Department.
     
In Helsinki, care for long-term patients is provided in wards of the Kivelä, Myllypuro, Koskela, and Suursuo hospitals. In Helsinki there are 1,165 patients in long-term care, around a thousand of whom are over the age of 65.
      The Suursuo Hospital is excluded from the planned change.
      “This is purely an organisational shift, the effects of which do not reach the patient level”, Kokkonen affirms.
      The changeover will be presented to the Helsinki City Council towards the end of November. Should the City Council endorse the proposal, the change will come into effect from the turn of the year.
     
Many Helsinki politicians are of the opinion that the matter has been prepared in secrecy.
      “The democratic decision-making process has been by-passed completely”, charges Helsinki Health Board chairman Jouko Malinen (Soc. Dem.).
      “We were informed of the matter in passing, as if it was not our business”, claims City Council member, MP, and MD Sirpa Asko-Seljavaara (Nat. Coalition Party).
      “Long-term care of patients is hospital care in the truest sense. The Social Services Department is not equipped to deal with it”, Asko-Seljavaara comments.
      “If there are not going to be any consequences, then why are they doing this in the first place?” asks assistant head nurse Anne Aro from the Myllypuro Hospital.
      According to Kokkonen, the plan is based on a general structural change, the aim of which is to reduce the number of patients in long-term hospital care by increasing their care at home and in old people's homes instead.
      Kokkonen emphasises that no patients will be moved anywhere, but the idea is to discontinue the wards maintained by the City within the next couple of years.
      According to hospital workers the plan is contradictory. “The sick elderly in need of care do not disappear anywhere”, says Aro.
     
On Monday there were 31 patients on a waiting list to be placed in a long-term ward in a hospital maintained by the Helsinki Health Centre.
      “These patients cannot be treated in nursing homes”, one hospital worker commented.
      Most of the patients have multiple illnesses that require a lot of tending to each day.
      Of the 216 patients at the Myllypuro Hospital, none is able to walk by themselves. A large number of them have to be fed by the staff.
      Of all the Helsinki long-term patients, only 70 were waiting to be moved to receive lighter care. For the remaining 1,195 patients the hospital wards that they are in are likely to remain their last addresses in this life.
     
All Helsinki departments have been ordered to cut their spending, and one form of belt-tightening is to reduce hospital care for long-term patients, for example by keeping old people in the home for longer.
      It is easy to see that patients and relatives are fearful of the moves, since many of the elderly people are so ill that they require round-the-clock care.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finnish family care-providers exhausted by hard work (16.9.2008)
  Helsinki needs clinics for aged people with dementia (24.9.2007)
  Helsinki´s homes for the aged suffer from acute shortage of nursing staff (5.8.2005)

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