IVO conducts supervision of services in the area of social services, in health care and for people with disabilities, activities under the Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (LSS), and supervision of health care professionals in their professional activities.
Health care and social services affect everyone, directly or as a close relative, in different ways in different phases of life.
Under the Health and Medical Services Act all citizens shall be given good care on equal terms irrespective of where in the country they live. The individual patient, care receiver or relative must be able to be sure that the Act is followed and that their interests are safeguarded. It is important to be able to count on the rules concerning processing, safety, equal treatment and the right to a particular service actually being complied with. Supervision means an independent and free-standing examination that laws and other regulations are followed.
Health care, LSS activities and social services often require well-coordinated and integrated interventions by service providers. This is equally applicable to elderly care, rehabilitation and the area of functional impairments and to psychiatry and dependency care. The dividing lines between the responsibilities of various providers are sometimes unclear. This means that IVO do not just examine individual services but that we also look at how the whole care chain functions and whether and how collaboration takes place between different providers.
In social care IVO conduct supervision of, for example, elderly housing, residential care homes for children, young people and adults, dependency care, SSA activities and individual and family care in the social services. IVO can also examine how a municipality has gone about placing a child or young person in an emergency or family home, but we cannot examine the homes as such.
In health care IVO conduct supervision of, for example, primary care, home health care, psychiatric and somatic specialist care and pre-hospital care, including ambulance services. IVO also have supervisory responsibility for medical care in the Prison and Probation Service and school health care.
IVO also examines health care professionals and licensed pharmacy professionals – pharmacists and dispensers. If IVO identify any deficiencies in their professional practice that represent a threat to the patient, IVO can propose various actions such as, for example, withdrawing the right to prescribe narcotic substances, further advanced training or guidance by another professional. If the deficiencies are extensive, serious or recurring, IVO can propose that the person be delicensed and lose the right to practice their profession. It is the Medical Responsibility Board (HSAN) that takes decisions in all authorisation matters concerning licensed health care professionals.