• Dagbladet made a mistake in working on this article, which makes the premise completely false. Norlandia and Oslo Municipality report sickness absence in different ways. Dagbladet did not discover this before publication and that means the entire premise of this article is false.
• Norlandia’s actual sickness absences are not “less than four percent,” as stated in the case, but 7.4 percent. Short-term and long-term absences must be added together to obtain the total absence due to illness.
• Dagbladet apologizes for the error.

***

– I am concerned about the municipal council’s plan to remunicipalize the Ullern health center. Norlandia has a very good offer here.

This was stated by Siv Jensen, former FRP leader and Minister of Finance, during the 2019 election campaign, when she visited the Ullern health center with Dagbladet by her side. She strongly warned against letting the municipality take over from Norlandia, which had operated in Ullern since 2013.

As is known, municipal councilor Raymond Johansen (Ap) won the elections four years ago and the Ullern health center was rightly taken over by the municipality.

Norlandia: 3.4 percent sickness absence

One of the elements highlighted by Norlandia in 2019 as one of the most important elements in providing good services was the low number of sickness absences.

– Well-functioning routines and strong HSE work help minimize and prevent sickness absence. Low sickness absence results in better quality of service, Acting Director of Norlandia Care Norway Ida Meisland Eide tells Dagbladet.

At the request of the Dagbladet, Norlandia indicates for the first time what the number of absences due to illness was in the year before the municipality resumed operations from January 2020.

In 2019, the Ullern Health Center experienced the following absences:

• Short-term absence 3.4 percent
• Long-term absence 4 percent

The replacement rent was approx. four man-years in total. One of them was due to a vacant nursing position, the rest was related to hiring due to patients requiring additional resources, says Norlandia’s Eide.

Last winter, scandals multiplied around the Oslo health center after a series of articles in NRK.

– I was terrified, especially the first few weeks. I was afraid of not making contact with the outside world. I was terrified that I would stay there and die without anyone finding out, former chief prosecutor Lasse Qvigstad told state broadcaster.

Following the NRK revelations, health centers run by the municipality were carefully cleaned and studied. Then, we also found out the amount of absences due to illness at the Ullern health center after the municipal council of Raymond Johansen took over its management.

Absence due to illness

In the first three quarters of 2022, sickness absences were 9.8 percent, according to a city council response to city council representative Hassan Nawaz (H).

In the last quarter of 2019, Norlandia operated in Ullern, there were 3.4 percent sickness absences. This amount was immediately lost when the municipality reached 8.7 percent in the first quarter of 2020 and has remained stable since.

The increase in sickness absence has therefore more than doubled since Norlandia managed the Ullern health center.

– This shows that ideology has taken precedence over what is best for the elderly. The Labor Party has been more concerned with opposing private actors than with solving problems related to aged care. In Høyre, we don’t care whether services are run by the municipality, non-profit organizations or private actors, we care about quality. Ap put users’ best interests second, health policy spokesperson Hassan Nawaz told Dagbladet in Oslo Høyre.

The PA-led Oslo city council believed that quality would improve when the municipality could manage the capital’s four health centers. This debate should now be left aside, says Oslo Høyre.

– It is obvious that the situation has not improved at the Ullern health center since the municipality took over its operation. Absence due to illness has soared, the use of substitutes is extremely widespread, and older people report serious neglect. This example clearly shows that we need a diversity of actors, for the sake of elderly people in need of care, believes Nawaz.

The Conservative Party further states that it will discuss with the administration relevant institutions for the tender, if they win the elections.

Ap: Not comparable

Health advisor Marthe Scharning Lund (Ap) believes that the figures for 2019 and the end of 2020 are not comparable.

– The municipality resumed operations approximately two months before the pandemic struck. During the pandemic, many employees were either sick themselves, in quarantine, or had sick family members. The figures for sickness absence before and after 2020 are therefore not comparable. Many staff have tried hard during the pandemic and the Care Homes Agency is working to reduce sickness absence, but they haven’t quite succeeded yet.

According to the Nursing Homes Agency’s annual report for 2020, sickness absence across the agency was 8.4 percent in 2019 and increased to 10.3 percent in 2020.

This means that, even before the pandemic, sickness absences in municipally-run retirement homes and health centers were more than twice as high as in the private health center in Ullern. However, Ullern Helsehus quickly rose to the municipal average after the public sector takeover, as published statistics show.

The city council has not yet responded to Dagbladet’s follow-up question on how it explains the difference in sickness absences compared to before the pandemic, or whether it has more recent absence figures that show that this is decreasing.

– When we see the sick leave and all the subjects that have been revealed in the media. Are you considering giving Norlandia the opportunity to run the Ullern Health Center again?

– No, our plan is for the municipality to manage the health centers itself. This gives us greater flexibility to adapt the offer as needed, which can change quickly. If some health centers had been run by private individuals this winter, we would not have had the opportunity to reorganize them as we are doing now, writes health advisor Marthe Scharning Lund of the Labor Party.