The number of patient complaints about healthcare has increased in most parts of the country, with southern Finland experiencing the largest backlog – though this is likely due to the fact that over a million people live within these health authority boundaries.
The time taken by regional administrative authorities to process complaints has also grown to over a year on average, which is double the target time. Only two out of six authorities successfully met their most recent processing time targets.
“Patients find these delays galling – it gives them the impression that no-one is interested in them,” acknowledges Satu Koskela, director at the Southern Finland Regional State Administrative Agency, which deals with patient complaints. “It risks damaging a person’s trust towards the authorities when things progress slowly even after the complaint has been picked up by our agency,” she admits.
Of Finland’s six regional administrative agencies, four failed to deal with complaints within the eight-month target. The shortest processing times were in Lapland as well as western and central Finland.
The number of complaints has grown steadily. Patients also tend to expect a robust response to their complaint, even though the majority of cases are dealt with by issuing a notice.
However, Kari Häkämies, Director General of the regional agency for south-west Finland, complains that the threshold for being able to make a complaint is too low in a number of cases.
“There are people who have gone through bad experiences and for whom making a complaint is a cry for help; however the complaints authority is not the right body that can help them in their life,” he says.