Government Moves to Ease Private Providers' Access to Finland's Wellbeing Services Counties

Finland's government wants to make it easier for wellbeing services counties to buy social and healthcare services from private companies, reversing some of the strict limits introduced before the country's health and social services reform.

The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health has prepared amendments to the legislation governing the organization of social and healthcare services. The goal of Petteri Orpo's government has been to reduce regulation and give counties more freedom to purchase services when they consider it appropriate.

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The proposed changes contain many details united by the goal of bringing private service production in as sensibly as possible.

The restrictions were tightened under Sanna Marin's government after extensive outsourcing in the 2010s. At that time, when municipalities still ran social and healthcare services, some outsourced their entire operations to private companies. In Meri-Lapland, an entire hospital came under the management of Mehiläinen. The strict approach sought to prevent similar large-scale outsourcing in the wellbeing services counties.

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It has been a real headache, because sufficiency is different for different tasks and cannot be some single percentage.

The proposed changes would allow a county to outsource the full operation of emergency services in a small number of locations named in the law. Private companies still could not provide round-the-clock emergency services at university or central hospitals. They could, however, take over smaller round-the-clock primary-care emergency departments or limited specialized-care emergency services in Ivalo, Kuusamo, Pietarsaari, Kouvola, Kemi and Savonlinna.

Many counties have struggled to recruit enough emergency staff and often use temporary workers. Mehiläinen called the easing of the ban a step in the right direction, while saying its practical impact would remain limited because only a few emergency departments would qualify. Pihlajalinna urged the ministry to consider allowing wider outsourcing. The government also plans to remove the requirement that counties maintain “sufficient own service production,” which officials say has created interpretation problems because what counts as sufficient varies by task.

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In the right direction.