Care pathway standards

Pan-Nordic care pathway standards would specify, for priority women’s health conditions, the diagnostic waiting times, PROM collection points, referral criteria, handoff protocols, and service delivery standards that bring consistency across the region. NKTEA at Oslo University Hospital is the only institutionally anchored national women’s health competence service in the Nordics, working alongside Helsedirektoratet on national pathway development for endometriosis and adenomyosis. Sweden’s Socialstyrelsen menopause framework, finalised in April 2026, carries condition-specific service-organising recommendations, with regional implementation variation already visible. Without pathway standards, Nordic women experience care depending on which region they live in, not what condition they have.

A framework on the NKTEA model, supplemented by the UK Women’s Health Hubs as operational reference and Ireland’s Phase 2 Action Plan architecture as structural reference, would let regional health authorities implement pathway standards that are comparable across the region without overriding regional budget autonomy. The Irish architecture is concrete: five endometriosis hubs, two specialist endometriosis centres, and six regional fertility hubs delivered under EUR11 million in 2024 and 2025.

One critical design constraint must be addressed from the outset. The BRACE final evaluation (NIHR, December 2024), assessing 17 active Women’s Health Hubs in England, found that GP-practice-based hubs risk widening inequity by being more accessible to socially advantaged women; any Nordic equivalent must design against this risk. The strategic value is that pathway equity becomes a Nordic property rather than a regional accident. The NMC, NFOG, NKTEA, regional authorities, and the five national health authorities are positioned to coordinate it.