Stakeholder seminar in Helsinki on 22 October

On 22 October 2024, we organised a stakeholder seminar on the topic “Collaborating to improve patient awareness”. The event was organised in cooperation with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety.

The purpose of the seminar was to get together to discuss how we, together with partners, can promote patients’ awareness of their rights to cross-border healthcare. The event also dealt with the European Reference Networks for rare diseases, the role of which is to enable international cooperation on the treatment of rare diseases.

The seminar was held at Kela’s main building in Helsinki, but the morning’s presentations could also be followed remotely. The event had over 100 participants.

Need to communicate about legislative amendment in the background

The law on cross-border healthcare in Finland was reformed in 2023. The legislative amendment changed, for example, the reimbursement practices in situations where a person has deliberately sought treatment abroad.

We thought that it was a good time to bring together people working in international healthcare to discuss how we can promote patients’ awareness of their rights and access to treatment. Different stakeholders can provide their own organisation’s perspectives, which will help us to find new ways of cooperating.

Presentations highlighted the challenges faced by patients

The seminar day consisted of two parts. In the morning, different organisations gave presentations about their work on cross-border healthcare. The speakers included representatives from the European Commission, the Finnish public healthcare system, Kela, the umbrella organisation for the social and health sectors SOSTE, the Finnish Association of Private Care Providers HALI ry and the Finnish Contact Point for Cross-Border Healthcare.

The seminar presentations covered topics such as legislation and practices in cross-border healthcare, reimbursements and the operation of the Reference Networks for rare diseases. The speakers also raised challenges related to cross-border healthcare, such as the complexity of the legislation and system, patients’ limited resources and problems with communication between countries.

New ways of cooperating were brainstormed in workshops

In the afternoon, we held a workshop where the participants discussed in small groups the problems with patients’ access to information and how we could work together to reduce them. The aim was to identify concrete ways in which partners could work together.

The small groups raised a number of challenges related to patients’ possibilities to seek treatment abroad. These included access to information on practices and treatment providers, challenges in applying for reimbursements, patients’ lack of resources (money, time, language skills, support networks) and problems with referring patients to the right authority.

The workshop participants also presented a number of suggestions for cooperation between stakeholders to improve the patients’ situation. These included communicative cooperation between authorities, training and information for healthcare professionals, promotion of the movement of patient data and cooperation with patient organisations.

EU Commission project in the background

The event in Helsinki is part of a series of national workshops to be held in different EU member states in 2024 and 2025. The project is part of the EU4Health programme, which aims to raise awareness of the Patients’ Directive and healthcare in the EU region. There will be ten national workshops in total, of which Finland’s was the seventh.

If you have any questions about the workshop, please contact us at yhteyspiste@kela.fi