Information was incomplete and often came too late
Summary of Report of the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision 1/2016
Inadequate transfer of information between hospitals and municipalities was one of the main findings of the countrywide supervision carried out in 2015 of cooperation between the services when patients are discharged from hospital and returned to the municipality. The deficiencies were partly about the way in which information was transferred, but also about inadequate content, for example about the patient's health status, assessment of functioning and information about medication. Deficiencies, or the danger of deficiencies occurring, when lists of medication were sent over, are mentioned in nearly all the supervision reports.
In this report, the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision summarizes the findings from supervision carried out by the Offices of the County Governors. The main model for supervision was that they carried out supervision of one health trust and two municipalities in each county. This report is based on 56 supervision reports from 19 health trusts and 37 municipalities.
All the organizations had made a contract, and all the contracts contained guidelines for how cooperation should take place when patients are discharged from hospital. Supervision detected that both the municipalities and the health trusts did not follow the current guidelines. The Offices of the County Governors pointed out lack of follow up and control by the management in many of the organizations.
The Offices of the County Governors concluded that breaches of the legislation had occurred in 36 cases of supervision. They also pointed out clear areas for improvement in 23 cases. In some cases, they concluded that there were both breaches of the legislation and areas for improvement. In 13 cases they did not detect conditions that were in breach of the legislation.
The Offices of the County Governors will follow up health trusts and municipalities where there were breaches of the legislation until the deficiencies are corrected and conditions meet the requirements.
Report of the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision 1/2016 (pdf in Norwegian)