Norway's fabled "cradle to grave" security seems to be disappearing, with a new study showing that only the most acute needs will qualify a patient for a spot in a nursing home.

Norwegians have complained for years over the long waiting lists they face for care at local hospitals. Now a new report shows that care for the elderly is far from sufficient in what's widely billed as one of the world's wealthiest countries.

A survey of 80,000 elderly persons living in 162 Norwegian townships indicated that only those with the most serious medical ailments and disabilities received a room in a nursing home.

Half of those who need help with everyday routines were still living at home, reported Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) on Friday.

"This is worse than I thought," Magne Roland, a former hospital director who had criticized state officials for lacking an overview of the problem before last fall's elections.

Roland, who has worked with the elderly for 40 years, is now chairman of the Grefsen nursing home in Oslo. He urged state and township officials in charge of local nursing homes and their funding to find a solution to the problem.

Limited alternatives
Most elderly who are turned away from nursing homes are offered some form of help at home, but it can be erratic and far from adequate.

Private solutions for the elderly are limited in Norway, where the vast majority of nursing homes are run by the public sector or public foundations. Independent- and assisted-living facilities so common in the US, for example, haven't taken root in Norway, where most citizens expect to receive mostly state-funded care after a long life of paying high taxes.

Patients living in a public nursing home are usually charged 80 percent of their current income, but their estates are left intact. Living in a nursing home thus isn't "free" in Norway, but it won't threaten to deplete a patient's estate, either.

The problem is that there now seems to be an acute shortage of nursing homes in Norway, and demand is only growing as the population in general ages.

State Secretary Rigmor Aasrud of the Labour Party admitted she was worried by the differences between care offered by the various townships, and that many elderly aren't receiving enough care. "We need to find the reason for this," she said.

Most townships will retort that they're not getting enough funding from the state. There have been widely publicized cases of neglect in recent years, including one recently where an Oslo hospital simply sent home a sick and frail 94-year-old woman to the apartment where she lived alone.

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