Under a new act, all social and health care service providers must be registered

In cooperation with the Regional State Administrative Agencies, Valvira is preparing a new national register of social and health care service providers called Soteri. Soteri is intended for licensing and supervisory authorities, and it will include basic information about all private and public social and health care service providers. Unlike before, the register also contains public service providers. Until now, only private service providers have been registered. Private early childhood education service providers will also be registered in Soteri. Soteri will serve as a register of supervisory information.

The register is provided for in a new act on the supervision of social and health care services, adopted by the Finnish Parliament on 27 February 2023. After being adopted by the Parliament, the act will be submitted to the President for confirmation. It is expected to enter into force at the beginning of 2024. It will be applied to public service providers from the beginning of 2026. 

The register will also serve health and social services customers and other authorities through its electronic information service.

Legal basis for self-monitoring strengthened

For the first time, the new act will bring together regulations on the self-monitoring in social and health care and strengthen and prioritise self-monitoring by service organisers and service providers. Self-monitoring aims to prevent issues in services, remedy shortcomings and reduce the need for supervisory authorities to intervene through post-monitoring. Self-monitoring is about quality control, risk management and ensuring the continuity of services as well as customer and patient safety. The role of authorities is to promote and ensure self-monitoring and intervene if self-monitoring fails. 

Service providers are required to have a self-monitoring plan which covers all provided services. It must be recorded in the plan how to report and learn from incidents.  Valvira may issue regulations on the content, preparation and monitoring of self-monitoring plans.

Wellbeing services counties acting as service organisers and service providers providing services in more than one service unit must prepare an electronic self-monitoring plan for the tasks and services they are responsible for.  The plan must be published, for example on a website. The act requires that findings of the self-monitoring programme and the corrective measures are published.

It also provides for several other measures promoting customer and patient safety.

Act on the supervision of social and health care services (eduskunta.fi, in Finnish).

Further information:
Helena Mönttinen, Director, +358 (0)295 209 404