Outsourced Health Services: Interviews of Office-holders and Medical Staff 2008

The data consist of transcribed interviews of Finnish medical staff and office-holders working in local government. The interviews focused on their experiences of and views on the outsourcing of health services. The medical staff comprised nine physicians and ten nurses who worked in outsourced health centres in three different municipalities in Southern Finland. The dataset contains seven group interviews of the medical staff. In addition, five office-holders, who had been involved in decision-making regarding the outsourcing of health services, were interviewed. The interviews of the office-holders were conducted as individual interviews. Additionally, one expert interview was conducted. The themes discussed included, among others, the goals and responsibilities in competitive practices, evaluation of basic healthcare services provided by the municipality, experiences of basic healthcare services produced by a private service provider, competitiveness of municipalities as service providers and that of private service providers, and estimates of future developments and the significance of competitive practices. Separate interview structure was used for individual, group and expert interviews, each. Background information for group interviews included the date of interview, the interviewee's pseudonym and amount of work experience. For the office-holders, information on the amount of work experience is not available. The dataset is only available in Finnish.