Tarja Heiskanen was taken to a ward instead of emergency care

Tarja Heiskanen, whose back pain became unbearable overnight, was taken to a ward in Varkaus rather than the emergency department at Kuopio University Hospital, where she received effective pain relief only in the morning, Yle reports.

Heiskanen, from Leppävirta, called the emergency services after her back pain became so severe that she could not get out of bed. The nearest emergency department, in Varkaus, was closed. Paramedics who came to her home consulted an on-call doctor in Kuopio, who advised her to wait at home until morning.

Heiskanen said she had never experienced such pain, not even during childbirth. She was afraid to stay alone through the night and called her son, Lauri Heiskanen, an emergency medicine specialist at Tampere University Hospital. He said he had never heard his mother in such pain before. Paramedic records say she was groaning, hyperventilating and vomiting because of the pain.

The paramedics later decided to take Heiskanen by ambulance. Her son assumed she would be taken to the emergency department at Kuopio University Hospital, now the region’s only overnight emergency department. Instead, she was taken to a ward in Varkaus under an overnight care arrangement introduced after emergency departments in Varkaus and Iisalmi stopped operating at night.

Heiskanen said paramedics told her they could not take her to Kuopio because of long queues. Records show that the on-call doctor had asked them to take her to the Varkaus ward if possible, and that she was to receive the same medication she used at home. If the overnight arrangement could not provide care, the doctor said she should be taken to the Kuopio emergency department to wait for a ward bed. Heiskanen’s records do not explain why she was not given pain medication during the night.

Seven workers interviewed by Yle, with experience in the hospitals in Varkaus and Iisalmi, ambulance services and the Kuopio emergency department, said the overnight care arrangement was not working. Yle is withholding some of their names because they said criticism could cause difficulties at work.

The North Savo wellbeing services county said overnight services were working largely as planned. Its leadership declined to comment on Heiskanen’s case on privacy grounds, but denied that patients were not taken to the Kuopio emergency department because of crowding. In August, a visit to the Kuopio emergency department lasted more than six hours on average.

The current arrangement provides round-the-clock emergency care at Kuopio University Hospital, while services in Varkaus and Iisalmi operate from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. After 10 p.m., ambulances may take patients who cannot manage at home to the wards in those towns to wait for morning and a doctor’s appointment, following consultation with the on-call doctor in Kuopio.

Unless the wellbeing services county changes its decision, the Varkaus and Iisalmi emergency departments will become urgent care clinics at the start of 2027, and Kuopio will be the region’s only emergency department.