According to TV4 Nyheter's review, which is based on the scheduling at a clinic in Sörmland during March, it appears that doctors rarely received more than seven patients during a week. But to pick out a schedule in this way will be misleading, says Sofia Mossfeldt, head of child and adolescent psychiatry in the Sörmland region.
Above all, because not all patient meetings are visible in the same schedule.
"We have doctors who work at the habilitation and meet patients there. We have doctors who work at our counselling centres and we have doctors who are part of our on-call operations. And these are all patient visits that don't make it into those statistics," mossfeldt says.
Want to work more patient-oriented
Instead, Sofia Mossfeldt believes that doctors receive an average of about three patient visits per day. An average that is also low, and which the region wants to improve by reducing doctors' administrative working hours.
" Can we review whether there are tasks that others can do? Are there certain types of certificates that are of a simple variety that could be prepared so that doctors do not have to spend as much time? Concrete things like that are what we're looking at," she said.
Poor fulfillment of the care guarantee
As for the waiting times to get a first visit to BUP, which is usually handled by counsellors and psychologists, the waiting times have been very long. In January, not even ten per cent of children and young people who sought care were given an appointment within thirty days – which is what you are entitled to under the care guarantee.
– We had a tough situation last autumn where we booked patients well ahead of time. Today we have a different situation where we are trying to work up this figure," says Sofia Mossfeldt.