Changes and challenges in Finnish health care management

Abstract

Finnish health care has been the target of continuous management reforms for decades. Most reforms have been aimed at effectiveness, enhancing quality, raising the level of management skills of health care professionals, and allowing patients greater freedom of choice. Thus, the reforms implemented in health care have been wide, many-sided and complex, and they have also overlapped each other. The main objective of this article is to analyze the current status of public health care management reforms in Finland by discussing the theoretical and practical trends used in the development of Finnish health care systems and services. The reason for choosing both the theoretical and the practical trends as the framework for this study is the hypothesis that only by combining these two issues is it possible to create a more in-depth analytical picture of the management reforms implemented in Finnish health care. This study aims to explore how health care management deals with system-wide problems, and what kinds of solutions, or even new styles of governing, have been introduced in Finland to solve these problems.