National health service strongly criticised

Parliamentary elections are still 7 months away, but it is already clear that health issues will be one of the main topics during the election campaign. The National Health Plan has already come under fire from within.

10 prominent physicians from around the country has signed a petition claiming that  the  Norwegian health care system is about to collaps. The blame is directed at Health Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and the Labour party government's health policy. The powerful medical petition comes in the form of an article in the Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association.

The Doctors are very spesific in their description of what is wrong with Norway's Health Scheeme anno 2013:

• The quality of services has deteriorated
• Bureaucratisation consume resources
• Politicians' invade doctors' field of practice
• The internal pressure leads to "moral decay"

- I have felt a responsibility to speak out for the many people who are desperate, says initiator Torgeir Bruun Wyller. There is a crisis of confidence in health care between health care on the one side, and politicians and bureaucrats on the other, says article author and consultant Torgeir Bruun Wyller. This is the result of what has occurred because management did not show us confidence, they will micromanage us at all levels, he says.

According Wyller and the other nine doctors behind the article, many of the problems are attributed to the government's preference for so-called "New public management" - or in other words that market thinking will be needed to streamline the public sector.

The petitoners believe that the current policy of "performance-based financing" (ISF) of hospitals illustrates what is wrong with this management form. The arrangement is that hospitals get paid per surgery or other treatment. According to the  government, the hospitals receive 40 percent of their income in this way.

The doctors believe that the current system means that hospitals are forced to "play business" instead of concentrating on treating patients.

Another factor they say is Internal Invoicing. This is a way for the different departments to absorb as much of the money as possible. - This goes beyond patient treatment as it consumes a lot of time on paperwork, says Arnulf Heimdal, who works as a doctor in Oslo.

Jan Stormer claims hospitals are characterized by a lot of red tape that steals valuable time.

The doctors describe a life where the system forces them to make inhumane choices between regulations and patients.

''We do not paint black, we tell you how it is''. The system created in the government healt industry is one of high security, where no ''critisism of the system'' is supposed to go through, and reach out.

The Medicine: More power to doctors

In order to correct what they think are serious problems, the authors of the critical article list a number of radical changes. In short, they want to shift the power from the bureaucrats and politicians and give it to the doctors and health workers.

This includes removing the regional Health Authorities, and instead introduce internal leadership at all local hospitals, replacing bureaucrats with professionals on the boards, remove the ISF and prohibit internal billing in health care.

The confidence in those in charge of hospitals are shockingly low, they claim.

In the Norwegian system, they say, hospital boards consist mostly of people who have no health care background. - It is incompetence that govern society's most complex business. We can have no confidence in a board that does not know the business we are in, says physician at Southern Hospitality in Arendal, Egil Hagen.

The Norway Post/NRK