sairaanhoitopiireissä

Sairaanhoitopiiri, commonly translated as a hospital district, was a regional authority in Finland responsible for organizing, financing and supervising specialized medical care across municipalities within its area. Its remit covered the coordination of hospital networks, planning and ensuring access to inpatient and outpatient specialized services, and supporting rehabilitation and other hospital-based expertise in cooperation with universities and the state.

Organizationally, each sairaanhoitopiiri had an administration linked to a council elected by the municipalities in the district. The council appointed a board or executive management that operated the district’s hospitals and coordinated service provision across member municipalities. Funding came from both municipal contributions and state funding, and the districts acted as a bridge between local governments and national health policy in the delivery of specialized care.

History and reform, role today: The hospital district system developed in the mid-20th century to consolidate expensive specialized care and ensure regional coverage. By the 2010s there were several such districts across the country. As part of the social and health care reform (sote), responsibilities for specialized healthcare were transferred to new regional authorities called well-being services counties (hyvinvointialueet), which began operating on January 1, 2023. The traditional sairaanhoitopiirit were dissolved or transformed, and the term is now largely of historical or contextual use. In contemporary discourse, sairaanhoitopiireissä typically refers to conditions or arrangements in the period before the reform.