KD and V give opposite pictures of the development of care queues

Both count the number who waited more than 90 days for a first visit to specialist care or surgery/procedure, and both exclude nine regions whose data were judged to be uncertain because they changed record systems.

What differs is the point of comparison – and how a change in the care guarantee in 2021 has been handled.

The KD number

Ebba Busch's figure is a processing by the Ministry of Social Affairs of SKR's statistics. Among other things, seasonal variations have been removed so that it will be possible to compare October 2022, when the government took office, with June 2026.

It shows a reduction in care queues by 41 percent.

In October 2022, care was still characterized by care queues built up during the pandemic.

The V number

The Left Party compares March 2019, before the pandemic, with March 2026. They use the open data found in the "Availability over time within specialized care" database on the SKR's website to calculate the number of people waiting.

Then there will be an increase in the number of people waiting by 33 percent. The same result is obtained if you compare the monthly average in the first half of 2019 with the corresponding one in 2026 – an increase of 33 percent.

Reported by Swedish Radio

The Christian Democrats have reported Sveriges Radio to the review board because the presenter said during a hearing by Ebba Busch that care queues had increased by a third since 2019.

KD believes that SR did not take into account that the care guarantee changed in 2021, which meant that more visits to specialist care were included in the care guarantee.

SKR states to SVT that they have taken the change into account and that their data must be comparable over time - even before 2021.

- The data from all regions is quality-controlled in several stages and should be reliable, especially backwards in time, says Johan Kaarme, director of the department for care and social care at SKR.

The government's investment

The government has invested close to SEK 25 billion in shortening care queues. At the same time, the regions' expenditure on health care amounted to around SEK 430 billion in 2025 alone.

See the review of the statistics in the video above.