Meny
3. History
3.1. Legislative amendment in 2019
The statutory scheme for reporting serious incidents to the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision was established in 2010. Until 1 July 2019, the duty to report serious incidents to the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision only applied to the specialist health service. After this date, a corresponding reporting duty was imposed on municipal health and care services. The reporting duty is set out in Section 6 of the Health Supervision Act, Section 3-3 a of the Specialist Health Services Act and Section 12-3 a of the Health and Care Services Act. We refer to reports made under these statutes as organisation reports.
From the same date, patients, users and relatives were accorded the right to report serious incidents, pursuant to Section 7-6 of the Patient and User Rights Act. We refer to reports made by patients, users and next of kin collectively as individual reports.
3.2. Digital solutions adopted gradually
The duty to report incidents to the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision rests with the organisation and not with individual health professionals.
Individual health professionals can submit reports on behalf of the organisation. By informant we mean the person who submitted the report.
Organisations submit reports via melde.no, while individuals use helsenorge.no. Digital solutions for submitting reports were implemented gradually in late 2019. Since 2021, we have received almost all reports digitally. The solution requires the informant to log in with their personal bank ID and complete relevant information, including:
- The patient’s or the informant’s own name or national identity number
- Next of kin
- The informant’s contact details
- Description of the incident
The information contains personally identifiable and sensitive information and is received via a secure solution provided by Norsk helsenett (the national service provider of e-health solutions) directly into the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision’s supervisory system. Reply documents are sent out via the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision’s archival system. These reply documents have been transmitted digitally since May 2023.