The National Seminar on Value-based Healthcare in Finland will be held in Helsinki 31st August. The Seminar is organized by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (STM), Ministry of Finance (VM), Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) and their Quality Registers, Pirkanmaa Wellbeing Services County (Pirha) and Vaikuttavuuskeskus (Center for Effectiveness), Vaikuttavuusseura (The Finnish Effectiveness Society) and Nordic Healthcare Group (NHG).
The Value-Based Seminar will provide an up-to-date view of what has been done nationally in value-based healthcare and what results have been achieved via concrete examples. The seminar will also give an outlook into what is currently ongoing and what can be expected in the near future. The seminar gathers together inspiring speakers and stakeholders across the health and social care industry to share knowledge on value-based healthcare.
We have speakers from different ministries and wellbeing services counties and hospitals in Finland. The seminar will be held mainly in Finnish, and in addition we have two amazing international speakers. Jason Sutherland, Director of Centre for Health Services and Policy Research and Professor of UBC School of Population and Public Health, will present some successes and failures of value-based healthcare to achieve meaningful impacts, and highlight new opportunities for improving value from healthcare from the perspectives of the patient and caregiver, the healthcare providers and governments. Eva Wensaas, Director of the funding and case-mix department in the Norwegian Directorate of Health, will speak about how to develop funding schemes that support many of the goals in the health service.
Speakers of the Seminar
Jason Sutherland
Dr. Jason M. Sutherland is Professor and interim Director of the Center for Health Services and Policy Research (CHSPR) in the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Faculty of Medicine and the Program Head of Health Services and Outcomes at the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences. Dr. Sutherland has been Canada’s Harkness Fellow in Clinical Practice and Health Policy (Washington D.C.) and recently Ontario’s Provincial Lead of the Value for Money program. Sutherland is the editor-in-chief of Healthcare Policy and an associate editor of Health Policy.
Dr. Sutherland has been studying funding policy, methods for improving cross-continuum care, and health systems’ variations in efficiency, effectiveness and quality of care. He has been leading research evaluating health system funding policy, value from healthcare, patients’ outcomes from surgery, and has advised governments on healthcare funding policy in four Canadian provinces.
Eva Wensaas
Eva Wensaas is director for the funding and case-mix department in the Norwegian Directorate of Health. The department works with funding schemes in the health service, and in particular with the DRG system and activity based funding including funding that supports interaction between municipalities and specialist health services. Previously, she has worked in hospitals in Norway and in county municipalities. She is educated as economist and has also a master degree in technology management.
Petra Kokko
Petra Kokko, PhD (Admin. Sc.), works at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in the Guidance Department. She is responsible for the development of information management and effectiveness-based guidance in the social and health care sector. Her special expertise lies in her broad knowledge of financial and information management in the social and health service system and in the study of effectiveness as a phenomenon. Evaluation and governance of the service system using financial, regulatory and information methods are among the most recent areas Petra has worked on.
Kari Hakari
Kari Hakari has been Head of the Department for Steering of Healthcare and Social Welfare at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health since 2020. In 2017-2019, Hakari worked at the Ministry of Finance as a change manager in the preparatory tasks of the regional government, health and social services reform. In 2016-2017, he worked as a change manager for the Pirkanmaa county’s regional government, health and social services reform. Before that, he had a long career in management and development in the City of Tampere. Hakari holds a PhD in Administrative Sciences.
Vesa Komssi
Vesa Komssi is Executive Vice President at Nordic Healthcare Group (NHG) and leads NHG’s Advisory services with a focus on impact-based social and healthcare services. He is also responsible for NHG’s implementation partnership with ICHOM.
Komssi joined NHG in 2008 and has been responsible for NHG’s Advisory services (2010-2017) and new business areas (2018-2019). Prior to joining NHG, he worked in the healthcare sector at Boston Consulting Group in Stockholm, Sweden.
Komssi’s focus has been on impact-based social and health care, strategy and performance improvement. He has 16 years of experience in a variety of roles in Pharma, Medtech, secondary healthcare, primary care and elderly care in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, the UK and the Netherlands. In addition, over the last few years he has been supporting the implementation of the health and social service reform in the wellbeing services counties.
Pirjo Laitinen-Parkkonen
Pirjo Laitinen-Parkkonen, MD, PhD, eMBA, anaesthesiologist, is the medical director and Director of Development and Research of the wellbeing services county of Central Uusimaa. She has extensive experience of more than 20 years in both primary care and specialised health care in a variety of management and development roles. Her research and development interests have focused in recent years especially on the integration of primary health care, social services and specialist care, multidisciplinary approaches, and value-based organisation and management of services.
Prior to her current position, she has worked as Director of the Central Uusimaa Joint Municipality (Keski-Uudenmaan Sote), as a Doctor in Charge and as a Research Director, as Director and Chief Medical Officer of the City of Hyvinkää, as Coordinating Chief Medical Officer and Head of Department of the Finnish Medicines Agency (now Fimea), and as a specialist at HYKS Children and Youth Hospital. She has also served on the European Medicines Agency’s Committees for Medicinal Products for Human Use and Paediatric Medicinal Products and on various international working groups related to the evaluation of the efficacy and safety of pharmaceutical treatments. Laitinen-Parkkonen is currently an invited expert and evaluator for the European Commission’s research and development programmes.
Suvi Liimatainen
Suvi Liimatainen works as an administrative Chief Medical Officer in the hospital services of the wellbeing services county of Pirkanmaa. She has long experience in healthcare management, effectiveness and integration. Liimatainen leads the preparation of the Vaikuttavuuskeskus. She has a background as an associate professor of neurology and holds an MBA.
Aapo Tahkola
Aapo Tahkola has worked for a long time as a general practitioner and as a development doctor in outpatient care in Jyväskylä. Currently, he works as a coordinator of the Central Finland Quality Network and as a value-based Chief Medical Officer in the Central Finland Wellbeing County and in the THL Quality Registers Coordination Team. He has also been a clinical expert in the core working group of the National Diabetes Registry since its inception. Tahkola is a general practitioner and doctor of medicine by training.
His key interest is how to systematically improve the effectiveness of health care, not only by measuring it, but also by systematically improving it. In recent years, these issues have been particularly interesting in the peer development of the Diabetes Register and in the creation of the Central Finland Quality Network, in which Tahkola has been greatly involved.
Ville-Veikko Ahonen
Ville-Veikko Ahonen has been responsible for launching the Wellbeing Counties. He coordinates the preparatory tasks related to the governance of the wellbeing counties at the Ministry of Finance and acts as a liaison between the Ministry and the wellbeing counties.
Ahonen has a long experience of more than 20 years in public administration and economic development, as well as in the implementation of administrative restructuring in different ministries.
Ahonen holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy.
Samuli Saarni
Samuli Saarni is the director of the “Therapies to the Frontline” -project and a social and healthcare developer. He has over 20 years of experience as a value-based researcher and developer of value-based evaluation methods. Saarni has worked as a senior general practitioner in the Southwest Finland Hospital District, Director of the Health and Welfare Business of the OP Group and President of the Finnish Medical Association.
Saarni has published on the ethics of prioritisation, legislation and measuring quality-oriented life years, has been involved in the development of the EUnetHTA model for the assessment of health care methods and has prepared a report on the development of content management in wellbeing counties for the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs in 2023.
Saarni is a LT, PhD, VTM, EMBA, dos, Specialist Doctor.
Erja Ailio
Erja Ailio (Master’s Degree in Social Sciences) works as a team leader at the National Institute for Health and Welfare. Erja has worked in various expert positions in social care data management for more than ten years. Currently, she is responsible for the national development of social care information management together with her team.
The project covers the entire life cycle of client information, from defining the information needs of social care clients to the secondary use of the data. The development is carried out in close cooperation with different stakeholders and involves a wide range of stakeholders, with an emphasis on the needs of both social care professionals and clients. It’s important to Erja that social care and its information management becomes more visible part of the social welfare system. She is motivated by the team’s common goal of knowledge-based and effective social care.
Pia Seppänen
Pia Seppänen is the Information Management Development Manager of wellbeing services county of Pirkanmaa, responsible for promoting information management, improving information quality and developing value-based steering. She has a long experience in various health care functions, including the development of care and service processes. Her research work has focused on the secondary use of data in the evaluation of health services. Pia Seppänen has a PhD in health sciences.
Markku Eskola
Markku Eskola is the Medical Director and Chief Medical Officer of the Heart Hospital and Hospital Director of Tays Heart Hospital. He has been working on the Heart Hospital’s quality registers for more than ten years and has participated in the core working group of the THL’s National Heart Register since 2018.
Eskola has been developing the Heart Hospital’s value-based service models and creating the Heart Hospital’s practices for measuring and monitoring effectiveness.
Markku Eskola is a specialist in internal medicine and cardiology, MD and PhD in cardiology.