Abstract in English, text in Finnish
The aim of the article is to generate comprehensive data on the basis of previous evidence on the outsourcing of healthcare services in Finland. The outsourced healthcare services specifically refer to those operations that were previously provided by municipalities as their own service, and which were subsequently transferred either to an external service provider, or provided as a partially or fully outsourced service. In this article, the term external service provider refers to an independent provider, such as a commercial enterprise, a private sector service provider, or a third sector service provider.
The research questions are as follows: 1. Which scientific perspectives have previously been applied to the study of outsourcing, and what are the types of methodology that have been employed in such research efforts? 2. Which specific topics have been investigated, and what are their main research findings? A systematic literature review was carried out, which resulted in 16 publications meeting the acceptance criteria. The data were analysed by qualitative content analysis. The results benefit healthcare management for the purposes of planning outsourcing activities. The results can also further be applied to direct future research studies into related topics.
In Finland, research focusing on the outsourcing activities of healthcare services has been studied from the perspectives of health sciences, administrative science, medicine, and social sciences. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches have been employed. The most common method of data collection concerned interviews and questionnaires, with the resulting evidence being analysed by diverse methods. For qualitative studies, the most common methods of data analysis were content analysis and frame analysis, while in quantitative studies, descriptive methods were used, which were supplemented by several statistical methods.
The main results of the existing evidence emphasised both the views and expectancies of the officials and politicians with respect to the outsourced healthcare services. In this article, these findings are discussed in the context of a decision-making theme. In addition, two further themes were identified from the data, namely know-how and the personnel and client perspectives. In Finland, the effects of outsourcing of healthcare services has been studied in a comprehensive and multifaceted manner especially in light of decision-making. An abundance of evidence also exists on the effects of outsourcing on the wellbeing of personnel and the quality of working atmosphere. On the other hand, research evidence concerning other aspects of outsourcing of healthcare services is scarce, and subsequently
