Effects on health related outcomes for patients crossing organizational boundaries in Swedish healthcare

Description

The background to the project is the reduction in hospital beds in Sweden in recent decades. This has led to stricter prioritizations in healthcare and capacity issues in hospitals. The project intends to investigate two different cases where patients are being moved between facilities for organizational rather than medical reasons, namely situations where patients are transferred to medically inappropriate hospital departments and transfers between hospitals and nursing homes. The scientific literature disagrees on the extent to which these situations affect patient safety. Data will be collected from both national and regional registers and patient safety will be measured through by length of hospital stay, readmissions and mortality.