Presented to the Board or a committee
Solvreten Primary Care AB
Board of directors
March 2021–present
Presents operations, access and staffing at every board meeting as chief operating officer; not a director.
Sofia Lindholm · Chief Operating Officer · Europe
What I would ask a care company's board
My contribution to a board
I would bring an operator's view of care services that are paid for by public bodies and delivered by people working to rotas. Boards in this sector usually see access figures, staffing costs and safety reports in separate papers. I can help directors read them together: whether a fall in agency costs has moved pressure onto waiting times, whether a rise in deviation reports reflects more harm or more honesty, and whether the opening hours in a contract can be staffed in July. I have run a single health centre and forty-one of them, and I have worked under three regions' patient-choice terms and their follow-up visits. I know where operational responsibility ends and clinical judgement begins, and I would respect that line on another board. I have never been a director. I would need to learn a board's financial and legal duties in more depth, and in my first year I would rely on an experienced chair and audit committee.
Committee contribution
| Capacity | Committees |
|---|---|
| Ready to join | Quality and patient safety · People and remuneration |
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 20 days per year
- Current directorships
- 0
- Sectors
- Rehabilitation and physiotherapy services · Dental care · Home-based care for older people
- Company type
- Privately owned or investor-backed Nordic care provider with publicly funded contracts
- Company stage
- Growing across several regions or municipalities, or integrating acquired clinics
The seat I am pursuing
I am looking for a first non-executive seat on the board of a Nordic care provider whose services, like ours, depend on dependable staffing, first contact and safety reporting, but which does not compete with Solvreten. Rehabilitation, dental care and home-based services for older people are the closest fits. The company might be investor-owned or family-owned, and preparing for growth across several regions or municipalities. I would join a quality and patient-safety committee first and consider chairing it after a year, once I understood the board's wider responsibilities. I would not ask to sit on an audit committee, because I do not have the accounting background it needs. Boards of care companies this size in Sweden often combine owner representatives, independent members and union-appointed employee representatives, and I would expect to learn from each group. I want a seat where operational evidence is part of the board's decisions rather than an appendix to them.
Board and committee exposure
Reported to a committee
Solvreten Primary Care AB
Quality and patient-safety committee of the board
March 2021–present
Reports each quarter on deviation reporting, follow-up and access, jointly with the chief medical officer.
Judgement in practice
Reading a staffing saving against access
When we ended agency cover in the north, the saving appeared in our accounts within two quarters, while the fall in timely medical assessments appeared in the region's reports. A board seeing only one of those would have drawn the wrong conclusion. On another board I would ask for staffing cost, access and continuity in the same paper, for the same clinics and months. I would also ask what management gave up to make the saving, such as opening days or listed patients, and whether the payer had been told. I would not resist a staffing change because access dipped for a few months. I would want the recovery plan, the date by which it should show, and the name of the person who would report if it did not. Directors also need to hear from the clinicians covering the gap, not only from the executive who designed it.
Asking what a rising safety count means
Our deviation reports more than doubled in two years, and a director could reasonably have read that as deterioration. The more useful questions were whether serious events were rising, how quickly reports reached a documented action and whether the same causes recurred. On another board I would ask management to show severity mix and time to action beside the count, and I would resist any goal to reduce reports. I would also want to know how the company tells its public payers about a deliberate change in reporting before the figures move. Clinical conclusions stay with the medical leadership; my questions would concern whether the system around them works and whether the board can see it clearly.
My first year on a board
I would spend my first months in the company's services rather than its papers. I would ask to visit three or four sites at the start of a working day, to see how first contact, rotas and handovers run before any presentation explains them. I would meet the clinical lead, the person responsible for patient-safety reporting and the employee representatives, whom Swedish boards often include. During the first two board cycles I would mainly ask questions and keep a written list of what I did not yet understand, especially the company's funding contracts, its balance sheet and its obligations to lenders. By the end of the year I would agree with the chair where my operational experience helps the board and where I should defer to colleagues. I would ask the chair for one piece of direct feedback after six months, not only at the annual evaluation.
Conflicts and their management
Solvreten competes for listed patients in three Swedish regions and buys from staffing agencies, digital-platform suppliers, laboratories and pharmacies. I would not join a company that competes with us in primary care, supplies us with clinical staff or systems, or bids for the same regional contracts. Before accepting any seat, I would give the chair a written list of these relationships and ask the company's advisers to check it against their own customers and suppliers. My employer's consent would be in writing and would name the company. If a matter arose where my knowledge of Solvreten's contracts or terms could be relevant, I would declare it and leave the discussion. I would never carry a region's terms, our staffing rates or a patient-safety case from one company to the other. If conflicts began to arise at most meetings, I would tell the chair that the seat no longer worked.
My independence statement
I am employed by Solvreten and hold a small shareholding through its management investment programme. Any company that competes with us for listed patients, supplies us with staff or systems, or holds contracts with the same regions for related services would need careful review, and I would ask the board and its advisers to assess my independence rather than assessing it myself.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The Indian Independent Directors' Databank applies to directors of Indian companies. I work in Sweden, so it does not apply to me, and I have not registered.
- In 2025 I completed a course for prospective non-executive directors covering Swedish company law, board duties and the Swedish Corporate Governance Code.
- Our chair has invited me to observe the audit committee's 2026 meetings to learn how it reviews regional payments, provisions and lender reporting.