Twice as many elderly die in nursing homes rather than hospitals

elderly careElderly care is costly in Norway. Photo: pixabay.com

Older people now spend a shorter time in hospitals than before, and twice as many die in a nursing home now, by comparison to the time prior to the ‘interaction reform’.

Researchers in Bergen have compared the situation before and after the reform’s introduction in 2012, reported VG newspaper.

Today transferred patients to the municipalities as soon as hospital doctors believe they have been processed or there is no more that can be done.

The researchers’ main conclusions are that twice as many die in nursing homes after first being hospitalised, patients are hospitalised older, fewer are transferred between nursing homes, while more people are sent home from hospital.

‘We have no variables that might explain the increased mortality, but we do not think more die because they are transferred to nursing homes’, said researcher, Frøydis Bruvik, of the Haraldsplass Diakonale Hospital, and the University of Bergen.

‘The reason is probably that some of those who previously died in hospital, now come into nursing homes for the last period of their lives’.

Bruvik said that it is in line with the reforms made that patients are sent from hospitals to nursing homes earlier than they were before.

‘The goal has been to provide treatment as close to where the patient lives as possible’, she explained. She stressed that the study did not provide any basis to calculate whether what is available to the elderly has become better or worse.

‘But those who work in nursing homes have got other tasks, and that is our main message’.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today