I dagens samhälle vill människor bli delaktiga och få medbestämmande. Personcentrerad vård medför att sjukvårdens strävar efter att patienten involveras och vården anpassas efter dennes behov och förutsättningar. På så sätt blir vården mer jämlik och kan utföras på ett kostnadseffektivt sätt. Vid utgångsläget på studerat sjukhus utfördes mindre gynekologiska interventioner på operationsavdelningen. Processen var resurskrävande och hade låg patientdelaktighet. Patientkontrollerad sedering (PCS) betyder att patienten styr sederingen själv. På så sätt kan både patientens delaktighet och värdet i mikrosystemet öka. Förbättringsarbetet innebar att utbilda sjuksköterskor från kvinnoklinikens mottagning att erbjuda PCS självständigt utan att anestesisjuksköterskan deltar. Då skapas möjlighet att utföra vissa interventioner på mottagningen istället för på operation. Syftet med förbättringsarbetet var att öka patientens delaktighet genom att införa patientkontrollerad sedering vid gynekologiska interventioner på kvinnoklinikens mottagning, Värnamo sjukhus. Eftersom detta arbetssätt inte är vedertaget var studiens syfte var att undersöka medarbetarnas erfarenheter av att erbjuda patientkontrollerad sedering. Förbättringsarbetet utgick från Nolans förbättringsmodell och strukturen i förbättringsrampen. Värdekompassens perspektiv och mätetal användes för att belysa effekten av förändringen, både för patienten, medarbetarna och verksamheten. Studien genomfördes med kvalitativ metod med hjälp av semistrukturerad fokusgruppintervju av medarbetare på kvinnoklinikens mottagning, Värnamo Sjukhus. Förbättringsarbetet resulterade i en funktionell sederingsmetod och ett förändrat mikrosystem för kvinnor som ska genomgå gynekologiska interventioner. Förbättringsarbetet stärkte patientens delaktighet och ökade möjligheten att bli en aktiv medspelare i sin egen vård. Samtliga värdekompassens balanserade mått påvisade att arbetssättet var välfungerande, patientsäkert och uppskattat både av patienter och medarbetare. Ytterligare effekt var att medarbetarnas kompetens ökade och att samverkan mellan klinikerna förbättrades. Studien påvisade att medarbetarna upplevde att det nya arbetssättet stärkte den personcentrerade vården. Införandet av PCS upplevdes både relationsskapande, engagerande och resurskrävande. / In modern society people prefer participation and co-determination. Person-centred care leads health care to involve the patient and the care adapts to the patient´s needs and conditions. This way the care will be more equal and can be performed in a more cost-effective way. Originally gynaecological interventions were costly performed in the operating room (OR) with lack of participation. Patient- controlled sedation (PCS) means that the patient controls the sedation itself. With this the patient's participation grows and increases value in the microsystem. The Quality improvement (QI) involved to teach nurses at the out-patient clinic (OPC) to handle PCS by themselves, without an anaesthetic nurse attending. In this way some interventions could be performed in the OPC instead of in the OR. The purpose of QI was to increase patient-participation by introducing PCS during interventions at the gynaecological OPC at Värnamo hospital. The study aimed at determining the co-worker's experiences when introducing PCS. The QI started from Nolans improvement model and the structure in the improvement ramp. The value-compass and measurements were used to evaluate the effects of the changes. The study was performed in a qualitative method with inductive approach using focus-group interview with co-workers at the gynaecological OPC. By introducing PCS in the QI women became participants in the gynaecological OPC. The QI resulted in that more interventions could safely be performed in the OPC. The new procedure makes the patient an active co-player, the competence of the co-workers rises, the collaboration between the clinics grows and the care is performed at the right level of care.  The study showed that the co-workers experienced increased patient-centered care. The QI built relationships, was engaging and demanding resources.

Statistik visar att ransomware har ökat lavinartat de senaste åren, inte minst under den rådande Covid-19-pandemin. Cyberkriminella har kommit att utnyttja sjukhus runt om i världen som redan är överbelastade med att ta hand om patienter svårt sjuka i Covid-19. I denna uppsats undersöks det hur de svenska sjukhusen upplever och hanterar det ökade hotet av ransomware. Den utgörs av en litteraturstudie och några djupintervjuer. Litteraturstudien görs för att utforska fenomenet ransomware och ta reda på varför ransomware är en framgångsrik metod för kriminella att använda vid utpressning. Syftet är även att undersöka hur svenska sjukhus förhåller sig till att hälso- och sjukvårdssektorn har blivit attraktiva mål för cyberangrepp. I intervjustudien undersöks sjukhusens IT-säkerhet för att kartlägga om de är tillräckligt motståndskraftiga mot ransomware-angrepp. Intervjusvaren diskuteras och analyseras mot bakgrund av litteraturen. Slutsatsen av denna analys ligger till grund för åtgärdsförslag. Resultatet visar att sjukhusen/regionerna som tillfrågats har en bra IT-säkerhet. De mest centrala säkerhetsmekanismerna för verksamheterna är deras backup- och återställningsrutiner i kampen mot ransomware. Diskussionen i arbetet sammanfogar resultatet från både litteraturstudien och intervjustudien som genomförts. Utifrån diskussionen dras sedan slutsatsen att regionerna som tillfrågats har bra säkerhet och uppfyller de flesta av rekommendationer som publicerats av svenska myndigheter. Inte desto mindre resulterar studien i några uppslag till förbättringar i säkerhetsrutiner. / Statistics show an increase in ransomware activity in recent years. The increase is mainly due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Cybercriminals take advantage of the fact that hospitals worldwide are overloaded with caring for seriously ill patients in Covid-19 and perform ransomware attacks. This thesis examines how Swedish hospitals experience and handle the increased threat of ransomware. The bachelor’s thesis consists of a literature study and some in-depth interviews. The literature study is investigating ransomware as a phenomenon and finding out why it is a successful method for cybercriminals to use in digital extortion. The purpose is also to investigate how Swedish hospitals relate to the fact that the healthcare sector has become an attractive target for cyber-attacks. The interview study examines the hospitals' IT security to determine whether they are sufficiently resistant to ransomware attacks. The interview results are discussed and analyzed against the background of the literature. The conclusion of this analysis is the basis for the proposed countermeasure. The results show that the hospitals surveyed have suitable IT security. The most central security mechanisms for the hospitals are their backup and recovery routines in the fight against ransomware. The discussion in this work combines the results from the literature and interview studies carried out. Based on the discussion, the conclusion is that the hospitals surveyed have good security and meet most of the recommendations published by Swedish authorities. Still, there is room for some improvement which is indicated.

INTRODUCTION: The study focuses on finding a methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of the nonpharmaceutical intervention in the face of a new pathogen entering the population. Different interventions can have different effectiveness levels in different populations; thus, studying possible correlations and effectiveness among different groups is essential. With better knowledge of the topic, the outbreak management could be done more cost-effectively, reducing the need for antibiotics, vaccines, and possible reduction of infectious diseases caused burden in developing regions. Furthermore, the study aims to determine the ways of using excess mortality as an evaluation technique for nonpharmaceutical interventions used in the Covid-19 pandemic.  METHOD: The variables in time-series format were used to calculate a cross-correlation score alongside other correlation coefficient tests. With the cross-correlation, the lag will be established to estimate how the variables correlate in the timeline. In addition, the study will attempt to establish the connections between different nonpharmaceutical interventions and their strengths and different age groups. RESULTS: The most frequent lag scores identified were 1 with 16 observations and 2 with 9 observations. The highest lag score was 4, which was observed once for the dataset of Hungary. The correlation between excess mortality and different harshness of NPI's was calculated. The correlation coefficient ranges from -0.3 to -0.39, indicating an overall low to medium correlation. The highest correlation was detected with stay-at-home requirements (-0.36), workplace closing (-0.37), and gathering restrictions (-0.39). In the final step, age-based correlations were established. The correlation ranged from 0.26 – 0.36, indicating an overall medium correlation. The lowest correlation can be seen in the youngest age group, 15-64 (correlation coefficient of 0.26), while the highest correlation of 0.36 can be seen in the 75-84 age group. Surprisingly the age group 85+ had a little lower correlation than the 75-84 age group. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: A stronger correlation between excess mortality and stringency index was detected in the countries with a higher death per capita. The two groups of intervention effectiveness were established: more effective (school closing, workplace closing, public event limitation, gathering restriction, and stay at home requirement) and less effective (public transport limitation, restriction on internal movement, international travel control, public information campaigns, protection of elderly campaigns). This suggests that NPI effectiveness depends on population size. In the age-group-based analysis, the correlation became stronger with the age increase, indicating nonpharmaceutical intervention effectiveness against high mortality in older adults.

One of the central challenges for the healthcare system today is how to manage care for patients with complex needs. This patient group is not well-defined but covers patients with serious diseases and comorbidities, or with a limited ability to perform basic daily functions due to physical, mental or psychosocial challenges. This group has a high service and resource utilisation resulting in high costs for the healthcare system and, typically, poor health outcomes. To improve care for these patients, it is necessary to implement strategies to manage the differentiated care needs, the additional support needs, the uncertainty in care delivery, and the coordination needs of the involved providers and the patient. Care pathways are increasingly used internationally to make care more patient-centred and to structure and design care processes for individual patient groups. Important elements in care pathways include structuring care activities, by defining their content and sequence; coordinating between providers and professionals; and involving patients in their care process. In this thesis, care pathways are proposed as the overall strategy for managing care for patients with complex care needs. The purpose of this thesis is thus to contribute with knowledge on how care pathways can be managed for patients with complex care needs. This is achieved by analysing how the practices coordination, standardisation, customisation and personalisation can support management of care pathways and by discussing how these practices influence quality of care. The quality of care dimensions discussed are accessible, timely, equitable, and patient-centred care. The empirical context in this thesis is the Standardised Cancer Care Pathways (CCPs) which were implemented in Sweden from 2015 to 2018. CCPs is the umbrella term for the national initiative to shorten waiting times, decrease regional differences and reduce fragmentation in care processes. CCPs include elements such as diagnosis-specific pathways and guidelines, introduction of CPP coordinators, and mandatory reporting of waiting times. Focus has been on implementing care pathways for 31 cancer diagnoses in all Swedish healthcare regions. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods have been used. A case study was conducted to examine standardised and customised care pathways, and coordination and multidisciplinary work in care pathways. A document study of regional reports on CCPs was analysed to study effects of care pathways on accessibility, timeliness and equitability. Finally, a national survey was conducted to deepen the understanding of the role of coordination, as performed by coordinators, in care pathways. This thesis argues that standardised and customised care pathways should be combined to manage care for patients with complex care needs. The customised pathway in particular benefits patients with serious unspecific symptoms, unknown primary tumour or more complex care needs, while patients with care needs that can be treated independently of the main diagnosis benefit from following a standardised care pathway. Coordinators are an important means to manage coordination, customisation and personalisation in the care pathway. The coordinators’ role is twofold: the first role is to manage care pathways by customising the care pathway and coordinating involved providers; the second role is to support and guide patients through the care pathway. This can be achieved by adapting interpersonal communication with patients through personalisation. This thesis further argues that care pathways have most potential to positively influence accessibility, timeliness, equitability, and patient-centredness. Accessibility has been positively influenced, especially for patients with ambiguous symptoms where symptoms indicating cancer have improved their chances of accessing cancer diagnostics. A negative aspect of prioritising patients who follow CCPs has been the potentially longer waiting times for other patient groups in equal need of urgent care. Notwithstanding, prioritised access to care is perceived to positively influence timeliness for patients following CCPs. Care pathways are perceived to have positively influenced patient-centredness by shifting the focus from what to deliver to how to deliver it.

Bakgrund: I Sverige beräknas det finnas närmare 54 000 vårdchefer, och behovet av nyrekryteringar förväntas öka markant. De flesta utav dessa är förstalinjechefer. Hur väl en förstalinjechef klarar av balansen mellan de olika kraven är avgörande för såväl organisationens verksamhetsutveckling, arbetsmiljön samt konkurrenskraften. Det är dock problematiskt att denna chef, som har ett så brett ansvar, med vanligtvis begränsade resurser, förväntas uppnå positiva resultat vid sidan av alla de krav som ställs på denne. Genom att undersöka förstalinjechefers egna upplevelser av sin arbetssituation så är vår önskan att få en ökad kunskap och medvetenhet om hur det förhåller sig i verkligheten. Syftet: Syftet med studien är att bland första linjens chefer inom vård och omsorg studera upplevelser av förutsättningarna för att utöva ett för dem hållbart chefskap. Metoden vi har använt oss av är empirisk studie baserad på en kvalitativ ansats. Totalt utfördes fyra semistrukturerade intervjuer med hjälp av en intervjuguide, formulerad utifrån Gulicks organisationsteori. Resultatet visade fem återkommande teman: tid, planering, tillgänglighet och kommunikation, styrning, samt ledighet och återhämtning. Slutsats: Tidspress och tidskonflikt mellan olika arbetsmoment var en gemensam nämnare i vardagen för förstalinjecheferna. Vidare fanns en känsla av att det fanns höga krav och förväntningar uppifrån. I planeringen av vardagen föredrog cheferna en grov, flexibel, men även långsiktig planering. Tillgänglighet framför allt gentemot medarbetarna eftersträvades kontinuerligt. Den hade högt värde, och förknippades som ett av de viktigaste uppdragen som en chef har. Kommunikation beskrevs ha betydelse genom tydliga budskap, i chefens synlighet, i dess delaktighet och i respekten till andra. Det var varierande uppfattningar av balansen mellan det privata och arbetet. Hur medvetna cheferna var kring att koppla av på sin fritid verkade ha samband med hur de fördelade sitt arbete, och i vilken grad de också tog jobbet med sig hem till det privata.

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This licentiate thesis aims to understand how infection preventionists (IPs) continuously find problems and implement solutions related to health care-associated infections (HAIs) in hospital settings. HAIs are infections acquired by patients during the process of care and are among the main causes of deaths worldwide. Recently, practices for HAIs prevention and control have challenged IPs due to pandemics (e.g. COVID-19), antimicrobial resistance, population aging and limited resources in health care facilities. Such challenges demand actions to find, solve problems and implement solutions. However, IPs often fail to address these problems. The reasons stem from their inability to timely identify valuable problems and implement new solutions. Although the literature on infection prevention and control is well developed, previous studies have largely investigated how IPs implement preconceived practices to solve given problems as a single event, rather than on how to continuously find problems and implement solutions.  This licentiate thesis comprises two empirical papers. Paper I investigates how infection prevention and control teams find problems with HAIs, and is based on a multiple case study of three infection prevention and control teams from one Swedish and two Brazilian hospitals. Paper II investigates how IPs continuously implement changes in infection prevention and control practices during pandemics, and is based on a qualitative descriptive study. The data in both papers were collected from 44 semi-structured interviews with health care professionals enrolled as IPs in Brazilian and Swedish hospitals. The key theories and literatures covered include Problem-Finding and Problem-Solving Perspective and Implementation research. This licentiate thesis contains three main contributions. First, it advances the Problem-Finding and Problem-Solving Perspective literature by providing empirical evidence on how to create valuable knowledge from ill-structured and complex problems. Second, this licentiate thesis suggests a distinction between HAI prevention and HAI control based on two modes of decision-making for finding valuable problems with HAIs. Third, the licentiate thesis describes and categorizes sets of practices that allow to continuously implement changes of infection prevention and control practices during pandemics.

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe psychiatric diagnosis that is difficult to identify. Diagnostic delays are 5-10 years and cause irreversible harm for the patient and burden health care systems. Health deterioration and societal costs may be avoided if BD were diagnosed and treated at an early stage in the disease progression. BD is supposed to be treated by specialised psychiatric health care, yet primary health care (PHC) is an important part of the process as it is often the first contact of care for patients. It would therefore be of interest to investigate the preconditions of PHC in relation to the process of early detection of BD. PHC is organised by regional administration and due to regional inequality in health care it would also be of interest to apply a geographic perspective, investigating potential geographic variation in preconditions. In this study, PHC professionals from two regions were interviewed using semi-structured interviews and data was thematically analysed. Results present mostly similarities but also some differing preconditions in the regional analysis. The study concludes that PHC has an important in the role of early detection of BD, but also for patients who already received a diagnosed.

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide as of 2020. Early detection and diagnosis of colorectal cancer can greatly increase the chances of successful treatment and can also reduce the cost of care including treatment. It’s shown in recent years that the colorectal cancer screening rates have slowed nationwide which impacts the new diagnoses of colorectal cancer (CRC) and the ability to treat it at an early stage to avoid increase in mortality rate. The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of the Affordable Care Act 2010 ‘s policy to remove colorectal cancer screening fee for adults aged 50-75 on screening, incidence, and mortality rate of colorectal cancer using panel data model and employing sequential recursive system of equations method. Since a decision to get screened is an individual’s choice, this study explores methods to increase colorectal cancer screening rate with the help of behavioral economics theories. Results of the study show that Affordable Care Act’s policy to remove colorectal cancer screening fee has a significant impact on both colorectal cancer screening and incidence rates. The ACA’s policy is associated with an increase in colorectal cancer screening rate while associating with a decrease in cancer incidence rate. Relating to the colorectal cancer mortality rate, an effort was made to examine the effect of the Affordable Care Act's policy to remove colorectal cancer screening fee on the overall cost savings resulting from lives saved. However, since this study found no significant impact of the ACA's policy on the mortality rate of colorectal cancer, further exploration in this regard was not pursued. On the other hand, studies conducted to increase colorectal cancer screening rate by applying behavioral economics methods have shown that default method with an opt-out choice and financial incentive with a loss-framed messaging methods are proven effective. Therefore, these methods can be investigated to design and implement a nationwide initiative.

Objectives: The Dental and Pharmaceutical Benefits Agency (TLV) is responsible for deciding which prescription pharmaceuticals should be subsidized in Sweden. Cost-effectiveness analyses are fundamental to its decision-making, but future price reductions following patent expiry are excluded from these analyses. The purpose of this study is to investigate and illustrate the economic and strategic aspects of including these future price changes in reimbursement decisions for prescription pharmaceuticals. Methods: We construct a Markov model in R to serve as a laboratory and evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a completely fictional drug, Liunek, under eight sets of assumptions and study differences in incremental cost-effectiveness ratios. Results: Including future price changes in TLV's reimbursement decisions will lead to increased healthcare expenditures if producers respond by raising prices, but may strengthen incentives to develop new pharmaceuticals. Policy implications: Sweden needs to decide whether it is TLV's responsibility to incentivize the development of new pharmaceuticals, and to what extent this should be done.