Patients’ right to choose

Patients have the right to choose where they receive healthcare

You can choose primary health care services from any social and health care centre in Finland, for up to one year at a time. You can also choose to receive specialist care from any Finnish public hospital for an illness or other care needs recorded in the referral letter, otherwise your specialist care will remain the responsibility of the hospital in your welfare area. So if you need specialist care more than once in the same year, you can choose your place of treatment separately each time.

You may also be treated in a private medical centre or hospital – in which case you are often responsible for the cost of your treatment, or you may have received a voucher or service voucher for the examination or treatment.

What does freedom of choice mean in practice?

At the Sydänkeskus, an admission visit may indicate that your situation requires further investigation at the hospital. Typically, this means an angiogram, but you can also choose to have other tests or treatments.

• A doctor’s referral is required for hospital treatment. The doctor will write a referral letter after determining the need for further examination or treatment.
• You can choose any public hospital in Finland under the freedom of choice for specialised healthcare.
• Your doctor will check whether the hospital you have chosen has the treatment you need and find out what the waiting list is like.
• Hospital appointments are given according to the normal order of urgency, regardless of the place of residence. Patients are treated in the order in which they are referred and according to their need for treatment. There may be differences in waiting times between hospitals.
• Freedom of choice can only be used for non-urgent examination and treatment. On-call patients are treated in the hospital nearest to where they live.
  There are no significant differences in hospital charges, the patient only pays the normal outpatient clinic fee.
• Kela will reimburse travel expenses to the nearest university hospital where the operation could be carried out. Other travel costs are the responsibility of the patient.

You can read more about freedom of choice in specialised healthcare at this link.

Updated 12.1.2023