The Karjalohja village association in Lohja, in Finland's Western Uusimaa region, bought a closed health centre from the city for one euro and rented the premises to a practitioner doctor. Half a year on, the station has longer opening hours and broader services than it had under the wellbeing services county, Yle reported.
"Now this really works and there have reportedly been a good number of customers. We have a comprehensive health service centre here, the kind you don't find elsewhere nearby," said Jussi Leppänen, chair of Karjalohja ry. The association has received many inquiries about the model from around Finland, and it has been presented to MPs and ministers in parliament.
Leppänen said the association has been asked along on party election tours but stays out as a politically unaffiliated body. He does not recommend the model as a cost-saving tool for other wellbeing counties. "Society should in principle take care of these services itself, also in smaller places," he said.
The Western Uusimaa wellbeing services county first decided to close the Karjalohja station, but now buys the same services from the entrepreneur-run centre. Anu Mustakari-Ilovuori, director of the county's general social and health services, confirmed this. "Many things were done here for the first time in Finland, and success is fairly difficult in a field as tightly regulated as healthcare," she said.
According to Mustakari-Ilovuori, the practitioner doctor model is expanding to at least the Central Uusimaa and Central Finland wellbeing counties and to Helsinki. Western Uusimaa now has 25 practitioner doctors, two of them working in Leppävaara in premises outside the county's own administration. Karjalohja, a former independent municipality merged into Lohja at the start of 2013, has just over 1,200 residents.
The village association is now seeking funding to replace the building's heating system, which runs on an electricity-hungry boiler. Leppänen said public funding sources appear to be ruled out because such grants are not awarded for a public body's statutory duties.