Number of Foreign Citizens in Intensive Care Rises

Landspítali National University Hospital.

Landspítali National University Hospital. mbl.is/Ómar Óskarsson

Foreign citizens spend three times as many days in intensive care at Landspítali National University Hospital as they did five years ago, RÚV reports. Foreign patients require more service than Icelandic patients do, but despite that, the hospital has not received extra funding for those services.

The number of foreign citizens in intensive care has gone up by 150 percent in five years. Tourists who seek hospital services usually are in need of urgent or intensive care. The greatest increase in numbers among foreign intensive care patients has been in neurosurgery, due to a rising number of serious traffic accidents among foreign citizens.

Most of those patients are admitted over the summer, which is when some hospital units are closed. In the summertime, 17 percent of Landspítali’s intensive care beds are occupied by foreign citizens.

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