80 percent of all patients who suspect that they have breast cancer should start their treatment in 28 days, this is a goal that the government has set but which the Örebro County region is the worst in the country to achieve.
This was reported by Swedish radio Ekot on Monday.
Only 28 percent of patients start treatment within the time frame.
According to Johan Ahlgren, the statistics do not mean that the quality of care is worse.
- The result has not deteriorated, only the waiting times have become longer.
There is no greater risk of dying from breast cancer in Örebro compared with any other county.
In terms of both 5-year and 10-year survival, Mellan, to which Örebro belongs, is second highest in the country.
Shortage of staff
Johan Ahlgren says that a major factor in the shortcomings is precisely the lack of staff.
- The biggest shortcomings we have are in the mammography business, where we can see that about half of all medical positions are not filled and the same applies to nurses in mammography, he says and continues:
- It's not just gold and green forests, there are a lot of challenges and we would need to fill in with people to be able to reduce waiting times.