National Patient Register
Purpose of the Patient Register
The purpose of the Patient Register is to:
- monitor long-term health trends in the population
- improve the prevention and treatment of disease
- contribute to the development of health care
- monitor the quality of health care services.
This makes it more likely that the health care resources are distributed fairly, and that safe and high‑quality care is provided on equal terms.
The Patient Register forms the basis for official and other statistics about Swedish specialised care. The Register is also an important source for research and for the documentation produced by the National Board of Health and Welfare on behalf of the Government. This can, for example, comprise evaluations, comparisons of productivity and other comparisons between regions.
Contents of the Patient Register
The Patient Register contains information on:
- all completed inpatient stays since 1964 (nationwide since 1987)
- data on patients treated by doctors in specialised outpatient care since 2001
- data on patients admitted to compulsory psychiatric care under the Compulsory Psychiatric Care Act since 2010
- data on waiting times at emergency departments since 2016
- data on patients treated by other health professionals than doctors, in psychiatric outpatient care since 2024.
Since 2015, emergency department encounters leading to inpatient admission must be reported as both a specialised outpatient encounter and an inpatient encounter. Before 2015, emergency encounters leading to inpatient admission were only recorded in the inpatient part of the patient register.
The Patient Register does not contain:
- data on primary care
- data on patients treated solely by other health professionals than doctors in somatic outpatient care.
Information available in the Patient Register
For the full list of all the register's variables, see List of variables.
For information about the quality of the Register, such as missing data, variable content and history, see Production and quality of the Patient Register.
Legal regulation of the Patient Register
The Patient Register is a health data register regulated by the Health Data Register Act (1998:543) and the associated regulation (2001:707). These also regulate which information may be included in the Register and the obligation of health care providers to provide information to the Patient Register. The National Board of Health and Welfare's regulations (HSLF-FS 2023:33) on the obligation to provide data to the Patient Register specify in detail how healthcare providers must fulfill this obligation.
Statistics based on the Patient Register
The following statistical areas are based on the patient register:
- Diseases and symptoms
- Surgery and treatments
- Compulsory psychiatric care
- Injuries and poisonings
- Waiting times in emergency hospitals
- Heart attacks
- Stroke
Extract statistics from the database.
For ordering statistics from the Patient Register, see Ordering data and statistics, "Beställa data" (only available in Swedish).
Contact
National Patient Register