Govt report sees risk of unequal access to wellbeing services

The gap between wellbeing services counties’ operations and finances widened in 2025, according to a report published by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health on Wednesday.

The report also feared continuation of the trend in the coming years, said the Ministry in a press release.

The underlying reasons include population ageing, an increase in service needs and uneven regional migration.

The Ministry, however, found that the wellbeing services counties organised their statutory social welfare and health care services better in 2025 than in 2024.

Some wellbeing services counties have still been unable to fully organise certain statutory social welfare and health care services.

Access to non-urgent treatment has become faster. All wellbeing service counties have developed and put various continuity-of-care models in place. The level of access to urgent and emergency care is good throughout Finland, said the report.

However, there are many counties in which access to specialist health care as required by law is insufficient. Examples of this include mental health and substance abuse services for children and young people.

The sufficiency and availability of personnel have improved nationwide in personnel groups that had previously been lacking. Digitalisation and unification of information systems, along with other development efforts, have seen progress in the counties.

Nationally and as a whole, the budgets of the wellbeing services counties have begun to show a surplus.

In 2025, their expenses grew at a slower pace than their budgets, even when the retroactive funding adjustment, which added 1.4 billion euros to their funding, is disregarded. Despite all this, the budgets for nine counties turned a deficit.

The report, which is published annually, is based on the Act on the Organisation of Social and Health Services and compiles key observations by the Ministry’s specialists on the outcomes of social welfare and health care services organised by the wellbeing services counties.

Their observations are based on expert assessments by the Finnish Institute for Welfare and Health (THL), as well as reports published by the wellbeing service counties and the Finnish Supervisory Authority (former Valvira).