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Older people living at home in Bjärred should be removed from care so that hospitals are not overloaded, a doctor decided this spring. Stock Photography.
This is the lead editor of the newspaper. Sydsvenskan’s attitude is independently liberal.
The revelation of the newspaper is scary.
It’s reminiscent of the alarmist scenarios that were painted on social media during the initial stage of the corona pandemic this spring. Then it was warned that medical care would be forced to exclude the elderly and multi-ill as beds began to run out in hospital emergency departments. But then this was dismissed as free fantasy: in Sweden, everyone has a right to care and no authority should use their power to classify citizens.
But Bjärredfallet shows that there are unjustifiable gaps in the construction of well-being and, worse, good opportunities for the responsible parties to blame each other for the blatant abuse of power.
Last Easter, three nurses from the Lomma municipality met with a doctor to review who has home health care in Bjärred. After the meeting, 180 elderly people had registered in their medical records that they would not receive intensive care, respirators or cardiopulmonary resuscitation in case of illness. According to the rules, evaluations and decisions about treatment restrictions must be made in consultation with patients or their families; the background may be that the patient is considered unable to receive intensive care or refuses to receive life-sustaining treatment.
The outcome of the meeting worried the three nurses. They wrote to the municipality’s special medical responsible nurse, who involved the municipality’s social director.
“It is regrettable that the health center has chosen to carry out this type of assessment without the participation of patients and relatives,” he said in a statement to the newspaper.
Despite the alarm from the nurses and the involvement of the social manager, the 180 people involved in Bjärred remained uninformed. The municipality also failed to ensure that the health center corrected the incorrect assessments, as it was considered to be the task of the responsible doctor.
A health and medical strategist from the Skåne region, who had heard of the removal in Bjärred, was reassured, and incorrectly told that everything was fine.
Meanwhile, a relative of an affected Bjärredsbo had reported the decision to the patient board, which, however, never received comment from the doctor who performed the weight loss. Even if the law requires the physician to respond, the board lacks the legal means of pressure to demand an explanation.
Only when both the board and a family member complained to the Swedish Health and Care Inspectorate, Ivo, did the doctor explain that it was the nurse who had to report the decision. Ivo also did not investigate the relative’s report, as no one suffered medical injuries.
The doctor who made the decision to exempt 180 has said that she saw it as her task to help relieve hospitals in the event of a crisis situation related to the pandemic. But Skåne Region officials say they have never sent such directives. The municipality of Lomma also, despite knowing what happened, informed Ivo of the selection. The social director tells the newspaper that the municipality has no obligation to inform users that medical records may indicate that they do not have the right to hospital care.
Bjärred’s story describes a Kafkalik care apparatus, unable to correct a devastating mistake, in which complaints and grievances from family members and employees are sidelined, hidden or simply ignored.
The crown pandemic has put the Swedish model with great freedom for authorities and decision-makers under heavy pressure. Some parts have been shown to fail the test.
It is unworthy. It’s a shame.
