Health stations | In Myllypuro, you may have to queue for a doctor’s appointment for 50 days – Breaking the queue for treatment requires miracles, says the leading doctor

Myllypuron there are people sitting in the lobby of the health center waiting for their turn to make an appointment. It’s a Tuesday morning in the middle of July, and the station doesn’t seem particularly busy.

Waiting in line with her child Kerttu Uhmavaara says that he is satisfied with the health center’s service. He has got an urgent appointment for his children from Myllypuro, always for the same day.

Uhmavaara called the health center in the morning, but since there were no appointments left, she arrived with her child to wait in line. After ten minutes of waiting, there were ten customers in line before them.

“You can’t call this a long queue.”

In non-urgent cases, on the other hand, according to statistics, the queue is long. According to information published by the city of Helsinki, you have to wait an average of 51 days in July for a non-urgent doctor’s appointment in Myllypuro. The queue is the longest in the city.

Head physician of the health centers in Helsinki Timo Lukkarinen considers the situation bad.

“It’s not ideal to have to wait a month and a half for a doctor’s appointment. Many illnesses can get worse in that time,” he says.

Myllypuron to the situation according to Lukkarinen, there are many reasons. One of them is the long-standing personnel shortage. Although the problem is largely the same everywhere, it has been more difficult for some health centers to find employees than for others.

According to Lukkarinen, when a health center operates with insufficient staff, it easily gets a reputation as a “sweatshop like a salt mine”. After that, it is even more difficult to find new employees.

In recent years, up to tens of percent of positions in Myllypuro have been unfilled. There would have been resources to hire staff, but there was a lack of applicants.

“It doesn’t help if we, from a higher authority, say that resources will be allocated there if no one can be hired,” says Lukkarinen.

The last one however, the situation has improved during the year. Still, out of about twenty doctors, only a few are specialized and in permanent employment.

“Some stations may have an apparently good situation, but there may be very few committed and permanent specialists or otherwise experienced doctors.”

When the staff changes frequently and most of the doctors are inexperienced, the more experienced ones have to use their working time for orientation and advice. In this case, the work progresses more slowly.

Long the queue is also explained by another phenomenon: people seek a doctor elsewhere than at their nearest health center. There are almost 5,000 more listed customers in Myllypuro than there should be based on the population.

Lukkarinen thinks that people changed their health centers from Vuosaari and Kontula to Myllypuro and Kivikko. Another popular destination is the Paloheinä health station, which according to calculations should have a little less than 9,000 customers, but in reality there are about 14,000 listed customers.

In Lukkarinen’s opinion, switching health stations based on waiting time or service is even desirable. He says that the city began to publish information about waiting times in part precisely because people would apply for less congested stations.

“We hope that people would apply where the service is better offered. That would balance the situation.”

The differences in waiting times at Helsinki’s health centers are considerable. For example, you can get a non-urgent time in three days for the station implemented as a purchase service in Ruoholahti, while in Munkkiniemi you have to wait 44 days.

HS organized Helsinki’s health centers based on their waiting time for non-urgent treatment and a customer satisfaction survey. In addition to Ruoholahti, Kannelmäki health center topped the list based on waiting time. Suutarila and Ruoholahti stations got the best points in the satisfaction survey.

Health stations waiting times have sparked discussion, especially since last spring. Then it turned out that Ruoholahti and Kannelmäki queue times at purchase service stations were clearly shorter than elsewhere.

“It is true that a person is in a better position in terms of access to treatment if he applies to Ruoholahti than to Myllypuro,” says Lukkarinen.

However, he believes that the differences in treatment are not as big in reality as they appear based on the numbers. He justifies this by the fact that the need for treatment is constantly evaluated and, if necessary, the problem is treated urgently.

In the current situation, most of the customers are treated as urgent, i.e. the same or the next day. However, only the most acute cases are often treated at emergency departments. According to Lukkarinen, you can still get an urgent appointment on the same or the next day, regardless of your health status.

Nevertheless, one cannot be satisfied with the situation. The average waiting time at Helsinki’s health centers for a non-urgent doctor’s appointment is 38 days, while the goal would be 10-14 days, according to Lukkarinen.

“The fact that it takes an average of 4-5 weeks to get treatment shows that there are a lot of people waiting to be admitted. For example, in the summer, customers are often asked to wait over the summer if the problem is not urgent.”

Health stations however, a positive surprise is also revealed when comparing. Previously known for its long queues, the Vuosaari health center now has a non-urgent appointment with a nurse in about 30 days. It is better than the average in Helsinki.

Lukkarinen says that a new treatment model was introduced at the Vuosaari health center at the turn of the year, which is partially thanks to the shorter queues.

Vuosaari’s model differs from the traditional operation of a health center in that the customer cannot book an appointment directly with a doctor. All patients are received by a nurse who, if necessary, consults a doctor. If necessary, the doctor examines the client immediately.

In Lukkarinen’s opinion, the model is effective, but not completely problem-free. Since there is a shortage of doctors in Vuosaari in particular, transferring research and preparation responsibility to nurses has speeded up operations. On the other hand, the staff caring for very long-term clients changes often, because there are no traditional private doctors or personal nurses. In Vuosaari, we try to take care of everything right away on the first visit.

Also the feedback received from customers seems to have turned for the better in Vuosaari. Lukkarinen considers this a success.

“Despite the corona, the queue has been broken down, the waiting time is on average for health centers and customer satisfaction has improved. Of course, you have to be satisfied with that.”

According to him, it’s actually a miracle that treatment queues in Vuosaari have been managed to be dismantled. According to him, basic health care is in a situation where the treatment queue would not automatically disappear, even if the labor shortage could be solved.

If health care is thought of in terms of economics according to supply and demand, we are currently clearly out of balance. The demand for health care has been increased by, among other things, the corona pandemic and new obligations aimed at health care. The supply, on the other hand, has been reduced by, for example, corona absences and labor shortages.

If demand and supply were brought together, the previously piled up treatment queue would still exist. When the reality is that health centers operate in a situation of too much demand and too little supply, breaking up the queues is a very difficult task.

The fact that the government presents also brings its own story to the matter Care Guarantee Act, according to which two years from now non-urgent care should be available in seven days. Currently, one of Helsinki’s 23 health centers reaches the time limit.

“We can’t reach that goal at this rate,” Lukkarinen states.