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You need a referral for non-emergency hospital care. Your need for treatment is assessed, and an examination plan is sent, if necessary, within three weeks of the arrival of the referral. An examination plan includes information about when and where you will be treated. You may receive an invitation to an outpatient clinic or to examinations. When the examination results are available, your physician will discuss the content and schedule of your treatment with you. You will be informed whether treatment can be provided at the local health station. If it can, a specialist will instruct the physician who wrote the referral on further care.
If you need to be admitted to a hospital, treatment must be initiated within six months of assessing the need for treatment. In pediatric and adolescent psychiatry, the maximum waiting time is three months.
Patients requiring
emergency care |
Outpatient clinic patients,
children/adolescents requiring
psychiatric care |
Other patient groups |
| Immediately |
Max 3 months |
Max 6 months |
You may decline an offered appointment time just once. After that, the maximum waiting times no longer apply to you. Waiting times for treatment or examinations depend on the disease, type of operation, and situation at the unit. Information about waiting times is published on the web pages of the joint authority of the hospital district, and is updated every four months.