Day Hospital Experiences in Sweden

Abstract

Day hospital care has been used within Swedish health care for about 30 years. In Norrköping, a town in the south east of Sweden, day hospital care was started in the beginning of the 1950’s. In the following decades several day hospital care units were established in many places of the country, e.g. in Göteborg where experimental activities were started in the Vasa Hospital in 1963. In 1975 there were in Sweden at 58 day hospital units more than 1000 “beds” (= places) used by more than 2000 patients. The day hospital care has been further extended during the last few years and at the moment there are about 1600 day hospital places in the whole country. Furthermore, a massive development is expected to take place in the decade to come. The day hospital care in Sweden is partly integrated into the clinics for geriatric and long-term care medicine and partly into the somatic nursing homes. Moreover, they have a strong connection to other primary care facilities, such as home care and public health care as well as such primary community activities established to facilitate for the patients to live in their own homes, e.g. social home service, transportation service and day center activities.