At Ekerö health center, the corona pandemic has already caused the staff to change their way of working. In just a few weeks, the number of video calls with patients has increased from a few a week to hundreds.

- Both patients and healthcare professionals have requested digital meetings to avoid the spread of infection. In a short period of time, we have scaled up so that our healthcare staff receive more and more patients digitally, ”says Sara Banegas, Head of Operations at Ekerö Medical Center - Practitioner Service.

Ekerö health center has 20,600 listed patients and about 60 employees, says Sara Banegas, who is the operations manager there. Photo: SVT

Great demand for digital healthcare services

Exactly how many more people who have received digital care are too early to say, according to Region Stockholm which awaits complete statistics. It is clear, however, that the healthcare companies Praktikertjänst and Capio reported a multiple doubling of the number of digital health visits.

- We see a sharp increase from both the health center's and the hospital's various services and a great demand from patients to use chat, video or telephone, says Daniel Forslund (L), Deputy Regional Council in Region Stockholm.

Moving to digital care takes place quickly

A contributing reason for the region being able to change so quickly is that some financial barriers have been removed in the agreements with healthcare providers. Therefore, Daniel Forslund believes that the temporary agreements can remain even after the pandemic has ebbed out.

- When patients have become accustomed to digital visitation, it will become a normal form of care. This will change the behavior of patients and become lasting over time, he says.

Can contribute to digital exclusion

The patient will continue to pay SEK 200 up to the high-cost protection. This is not about increased staffing, but about ordinary staff receiving more digital visits.

- The risk with such a reform is that it can create digital exclusion. At the same time, the simpler cases can be handled digitally and then the queues for physical care are reduced, says Daniel Forslund.

It is now hoped that the agreements the region has with private digital healthcare providers that go through Region Sörmland can be redirected to the region's own healthcare providers.

- There are large volumes using these calls. That's why we want to include these services in our healthcare offering instead, says Daniel Forslund.