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It has been a turbulent week at Helgeland Hospital.
It began this weekend when Rana Blad announced the completion of the external review of bowel cancer surgery at Helgeland Hospital.
Two out of three of the reports are highly critical of the bowel cancer surgery being performed in Sandnessjøen, and the management of Helgeland Hospital has referred the case to the Norwegian Board of Health.
It is unclear how the local newspaper dealt with the reports, before an entire professional setting at Helgeland Hospital had read and discussed the content.
That’s what makes a fuss. Today, the professional communities at Sandnessjøen hospital had to meet with the hospital management in a neutral way in Mosjøen to review the reports.
Meeting canceled
Late Thursday night, the hospital writes in an email that the meeting has been canceled.
Today, the Sandnessjøen Medical Association has called a press conference.
Here, doctors claim they have documentation that they believe shows that department head Ida Bukholm has not turned over all the data material to outside university hospitals, which have prepared reports on bowel cancer surgery at Helgeland Hospital.
– Yesterday we were informed that some of the outsiders who have looked at the figures have not received full figures, they have only received data on Sandnessjøen hospital. This means that the basis on which these reports are based is not complete. We have to get a real and correct database to know what kind of treatment we give to patients, says hospital doctor Ingeborg Steinholt, who is a representative of the hospital’s quality committee.
DEVIATION: In the last few days, there has been a strong wind around the three reports of bowel cancer surgery at Helgeland Hospital.
Photo: Bjørn Erik Rygg Lunde / NRK
No more confidence
He also reacts to the way the hospital management approached the case that was published in the media.
– They should not have gone out and concluded before we had a chance to comment and correct any errors in the reports. Now we see that the department head comes out and concludes that serious mistakes have been made and that the quality is not good enough. We believe that we could have corrected such an image if we had been allowed to answer questions and clear up any misunderstandings.
Now the employees feel that they no longer have the hospital management behind them.
– We no longer trust that the department head can direct the work and we want someone else to come in to direct the work. We need someone who can contribute to peace and who can do the job properly, says Steinholt.
Helgeland Hospital: – Full confidence
Helgeland Hospital Managing Director, Hulda Gunnlaugsdottir.
Photograph: Lars-Bjørn Martinsen / NRK
In a written response to NRK, Executive Director Hulda Gunnlaugsdottir emphasizes that she has full confidence in department head Ida Bukholm.
Gunnlaugsdottir also says that there is currently no basis for saying anything about whether outside experts have received the full database.
– The important thing now and in the future is to await the work of the Norwegian Board of Health with the case and the result of that, says the CEO.
High mortality
He is raiding the Helgeland Hospital again, after reports show errors and shortcomings in relation to operations carried out especially in Sandnessjøen.
Photo: Ole-Christian Olsen / NRK
It was in January that abnormally high mortality was revealed after cancer operations at Helgeland Hospital in the years 2016-2018.
On 12 January, all planned cancer surgeries at Sandnessjøen Hospital were canceled, effective immediately.
After closing, a professional group with representatives from Health North, Helgeland Hospital, and UNN reviewed all patient records. As a result, the cancer surgery was reopened.
On Wednesday, Dagens Medisin wrote that department head Ida Bukholm at the hospital disagreed with the professional group’s conclusion but respected the decision.
Following this, three external evaluations of bowel cancer surgery were ordered in hospitals.
Although two out of three external reports show that many of the operations have been unjustifiable, Helgeland Hospital has not stopped operations this time.
There is no reason for that, says the doctor at Sandnessjøen hospital.
– There is nothing new in these figures that we did not know in January. These are the same numbers that have been reviewed.
– Save patients
Steinholt says it has been a difficult week for Sandnessjøen hospital employees, patients and families.
– We are concerned about the patients, who are afraid of the treatment they receive from us. That is depressing to us.
Steinholt says the Sandnessjøen doctors hoped to work with quality in cancer surgery.
– We were hoping it would lead us to move on. Instead, we see that patients and staff are terribly desperate and worried about the way forward.
Dispute of inflamed localization at the bottom
The deviations in two out of every three operations are alarming. At the same time, there is a very low number of operations, so the number should be interpreted with caution, says Siri Gulliksen Tømmerbakke at Dagens Medisin.
Photo: Dagens Medisin
Today there are three hospitals in Helgeland: in Sandnessjøen, Mosjøen and Mo i Rana.
On January 27, Health Minister Bent Høie (H) announced that there will be two emergency hospitals in the region and therefore opted for the solution adopted by Helse Nord: an emergency hospital in Mo i Rana and another in and around Sandnessjøen. The Sandnessjøen Emergency Hospital and its surroundings will be the main hospital.
Journalist Siri Gulliksen Tømmerbakke at Dagens Medisin has followed the case of intestinal surgery at Helgeland Hospital.
To understand why this case is so inflamed, it is important to take the story with you.
– At the bottom there is an inflamed localization dispute, which is important to know. That is why there is politics in the case.
But allegations of hidden agendas and mistrust related to the new hospital structure are not so special, according to Tømmerbakke.
– It’s really not very unique. We have examples of heated location discussions in various parts of the country. In Møre og Romsdal, for example, but also here in northern Norway, where the PCI case is a good example of recent times.
When hospitals are to be built or closed, or functions are transferred, participation in the population is always created. It should and should do, believes the health journalist.
– It’s about that we want to feel safe where we live, regardless of whether we live in Oslo or Mørsvikbotn.
