Swedish: om inte verksamheten själva anger något annat

[Gavril]

From a patient information sheet about how to prepare for a hospital procedure:

För att minska risken för smittor får högst en person följa med till vårdbesöket, om inte verksamheten själva anger något annat.

"To reduce the risk of infections, no more than one person should accompany you to your treatment appointment, unless the [???] itself specifies otherwise.
"

Despite it being a very common term, the meaning of "verksamhet" still eludes me to a large extent.

What does "verksamheten" mean here?

Is it an organization / group of people?
A concrete activity?
Etc.?

Thanks,
Gavril

 

[raumar]

I suppose that Swedish "verksamhet" is used in the same way as Norwegian "virksomhet". If that is the case, it is correct that "verksamhet" has two meanings - activity and company/institution. But in this sentence, it must be the latter meaning. An activity can't make decisions on the number of people who are allowed to accompany a patient. "Verksamheten" must refer to the hospital, or the relevant hospital department/unit.

I don't know why they used the diffuse word "verksamheten" instead of "sjukhuset". But this usage note from Wictionary may be useful:

• Verksamhet is a neutral word, often used in legal texts and social sciences to denote any kind of private or public institution or enterprise.

verksamhet - Wiktionary

 

[Gavril]

Thanks. My first thought was that verksamheten might refer to the hospital, or the relevant hospital personnel.

By the way, I don't use Wiki sites as authoritative sources. Does the quoted sentence match your experience of how verksamhet is used in Swedish, or how its cognate is used in Norwegian?

 

[raumar]

My first thought was that verksamheten referred to the hospital, or the relevant hospital personnel.

Yes - logically, I don't think it can be anything else.

Does the quoted sentence match your experience of how verksamhet is used in Swedish, or how its cognate is used in Norwegian?

I can't speak for Swedish, and I hope some Swedes can comment on this. But it matches my experience of how "virksomhet" is used in legal and bureaucratic Norwegian (but probably not in everyday language).

For example, I found that Statistics Norway uses "virksomheter" as a concept that covers both government institutions, corporations and non-profit institutions. In the English translation, they use "establishments":

Virksomheter
Establishments

 

[AutumnOwl]

Verksamhet as it's used in post #1 can be understood as a department (klinik) at a hospital under an operations manager, responsible for one or several wards and/or outpatient clinics. During the covid-19 epidemic a patient could only have one person accompany them, but the Children's Department at our local hospital decided that both parents could accompany their child under the age of 12 on an outpatient visit, and stay with the child at a ward. On the other hand pregnant women could not have their partner accompanying them on hospital visits during prenatal care visits.