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The Wellbeing Services County of Pirkanmaa and Tampere Universities: Multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral RDI cooperation to solve well-being challenges
Like most European countries, Finland is confronted with a tremendous health and care challenge. Ageing populations and tighter budgets are creating a gap between growing demand for welfare services and a decreasing supply of resources. Also, traditional organizational structures where different health and social care practices take place in their own siloes hinder comprehensive service development: they are developed narrowly, with a focus on individual services and their needs.
To improve the efficiency of care services, the Finnish government is moving welfare services from 309 municipalities to 21 regional governments (counties). The responsibility for organizing health, social and rescue services will be transferred to welfare services counties from the beginning of 2023. Yet municipalities will remain responsible for promoting the health and wellbeing of their residents. The public sector will remain the services’ organizer and primary provider. Private sector actors and the third sector will provide supplementary services.
The ongoing reform of social and health care in Finland requires the development of operating models. The reform was undertaken because the old system does not work. Additional resources do not automatically improve services and, for example, increasing the number of doctors alone will not solve the availability of services or customers’ well-being. Therefore, the success of the reform requires the development of the service system, and the production and provision methods of services to be even more efficient and effective.
The actual organization of welfare services is currently unknown. The counties try to figure out how to respond to different challenges in a more efficient and effective way. In the Tampere region for example, a solution is to merge separate service islands and build a multidisciplinary and multiprofessional social and healthcare center. In the future the Kauppi University Social and Healthcare Center will provide social and health care services for more than 60,000 residents. Kauppi University Social and Healthcare Center refers to both an organization providing the services and a facility (a building) where they are provided. The building will be built in the same campus with the university hospital and the universities. The idea is to combine the health and social care service provision, education, and RDI activities under one roof to vanish the boundaries between individual service areas, provide authentic learning environments, and enable research activities that are tightly integrated with the practices.
As the planning process for Kauppi University Social and Healthcare Center is currently underway, various activities that should be included have been identified. This necessitates the removal of structural and organizational barriers across institutions and different health and social services. The explicit goal is to integrate health and social care service provision, education, and research, eradicating the boundaries between individual service areas and creating authentic learning environments that tightly integrate research and development activities with practical practices. Local universities are recognized as key players in driving social change and development. However, successful cooperation requires new relationships and mechanisms from local universities to address societal needs.