Quality Report: Monitoring of Services for Older People

Data description

Statistical presentation

The statistics contain information on units providing 24-hour care and home care for older persons, as well as on personnel and the realisation of service hours. The statistics include data only from mainland Finland; Åland Islands is not included.

Data on 24-hour care include information from both the public and private sectors from 2020 onwards. Data on home care include units operated by wellbeing services counties and those private home care units that provide services as purchased services or voucher service partners of wellbeing services counties. Home care may be provided in the client’s home or in units for communal housing. The first statistical year for the monitoring of the adequacy of home care was 2023.

The statistical data are published once a year. The statistics were published for the first time in March 2023.

Relevance

The data included in the statistics are used in the planning, management, evaluation and supervision of services for older persons, in assessing the implementation of the The Act on Care Services for Older Persons and on Social and Health Care Services for Older Persons and the Social Welfare Act, in supporting national and regional decision-making, and in monitoring national strategic objectives and action programmes, such as quality recommendations.

Data content of the statistics

The statistics include information on the number and size of units providing 24-hour care and long-term institutional care, as well as on the share of the private sector. The statistics describe the realised staffing ratio in 24-hour care and the number and structure of personnel engaged in direct client work in the units. In addition, the share of working time spent on direct client work is described by occupational group.

The statistics include information on the number of home care units, their size categories and the share of the private sector. The statistics contain data on personnel numbers and structure in the units, as well as on the share of client time in the working time of different occupational groups. In addition, the statistics include data on the realisation of home care service hours in accordance with clients’ care plans.

Statistical processing 

The source data for the statistics consist of information collected as part of the Monitoring of Services for Older People. Data on 24-hour care are collected twice a year (in spring and autumn), and the statistics use the data collected in autumn. Data on the adequacy of home care are collected once a year in autumn.

Source data

Data on 24-hour care and long-term institutional care are collected through the Staffing ratio monitoring. The target population of the staffing ratio monitoring consists of units providing 24-hour care for older persons, residential homes for older persons, and long-term care wards in health centres located in mainland Finland. Service providers submit to THL information on the units included in the monitoring. The target population of the staffing ratio monitoring does not include assessment units, family care, or units operating under a health care licence. The statistics cover both public and private service providers.

The statistics are based on data received from service providers. Service providers may submit unit-level data for all their units via THL’s data submission service, or the persons responsible for the care units may submit the data using an electronic form via THL’s form service.

The data do not include individual-level information; all data are collected at unit level. The length of the staffing ratio monitoring period is always three weeks. The statistics include data for November for the years 2020–2022 and data for October for both home care and 24-hour care from 2023 onwards.

Data on home care are collected through the Monitoring the Adequacy of Home Care. The target population consists of public units providing home care in mainland Finland and private home care units operating as purchased service providers or voucher service partners of the public sector. Wellbeing services counties submit to THL information on the units included in the monitoring. The statistics cover both public and private service providers and are based on data received from the units.

The statistics do not include individual-level data; all data are collected at unit level. Data on personnel and service hours include only those units that have at least one (1) older client with a public decision on home care services. The statistics include the total working time of personnel involved in the provision of home care. Part of the recorded working time may be allocated to other services. Client time includes only the time allocated to home care services. The statistics include all home care clients of the unit, including clients with disabilities, mental health rehabilitation clients and substance abuse clients.

Data collection

There are two alternative methods for submitting data for the staffing ratio monitoring in 24-hour care: 1) the service provider submits unit-level data via THL’s data submission service, or 2) the persons responsible for the units submit the data using an electronic form via THL’s form service. In 2020, the data were submitted once a year, and from 2021 onwards twice a year.

The persons responsible for the units submit data for the monitoring of the adequacy of home care once a year using an electronic form via THL’s form service.

Data validation

THL sets a deadline by which data must be submitted if the data provider wishes THL to perform logical validation checks on the submitted data. During logical validation, THL uses algorithms to identify anomalies in the submitted data, which may result, for example, from data entry errors. Data providers are responsible for the accuracy of the information they submit. Logical validation does not detect all errors.

Suspected anomalies identified during the logical validation are communicated to the data providers approximately one week before the end of the response period. During this time, data providers have the opportunity to review and, if necessary, correct the data they have submitted. THL does not make any changes to the data it receives; however, clearly erroneous data may be excluded from publication (see Section 4.3).

Data compilation

Unit-level monitoring data submitted via THL’s data submission service and form service are compiled into datasets intended for research use. During the dataset compilation process, derived variables corresponding to the content of the data are created for both the staffing ratio and home care adequacy monitoring datasets. The derived variables are based on the information submitted by the units and concern indicators calculated for the units at weekly and monitoring-period levels.

The quality of the published data is ensured by applying the logical validation methods used during data collection to the research datasets. This allows for the identification of obvious errors that may have occurred after the logical checks performed during the monitoring. THL does not make any changes to the data submitted by the units or service producers; however, clearly erroneous data may be excluded from publication (see Section 4.3).

During the data processing phase, the datasets are combined with verified unit background information using permanent unit identifiers, which allow reliable identification of units over time.

Data revision

Data from previous statistical years are corrected retroactively if necessary in connection with the next statistical publication, provided that the errors result from THL’s data processing. Errors reported by the service provider or by the person responsible for the unit are not corrected retroactively after the deadline set for data submission. To date, no retrospective corrections have been made to the statistics. The impact of any potential corrections is generally considered to be small.

Quality assessment of the statistics

Accuracy and reliability

The data in the statistics are based on information provided by service providers and unit-level responsible persons, and the accuracy of the data mainly depends on the information received. The statistics include data submitted by the deadline set by THL. Data providers cannot correct or submit information after the deadline set by THL.

Timeliness and punctuality

Data for the staffing ratio monitoring are submitted to THL twice a year. The statistical report is published within six months after the end of the monitoring period for the second monitoring of the year. However, unit-level staffing ratio results are published after each monitoring period as a Realised Staffing Ratio Database within six months of the end of the monitoring. The database report includes results from the two most recent data collections.

Data on the adequacy of home care are collected once a year directly from the units using an electronic survey form. The data are published once a year in a statistical report within six months of the end of the monitoring.

Coherence and comparability

The statistics are updated once a year. They include only the personnel and service data of units that submitted their information to THL by the deadline. Information on the number of units and the calculation of response rates includes all units covered by the monitoring. Response rates are presented in Section 8. In 24-hour care, there have been no changes in response activity that are expected to significantly affect the comparability of the data. The response rate in home care was five percentage points lower in 2025 than in 2023 and 2024. Most of the non-response in 2025 was due to units in the private sector not responding. Nevertheless, the relative percentages for 2025 are likely to be reliably comparable with the results from previous years.

In contrast, there is some uncertainty in the comparability of absolute figures, such as the number of personnel. The number of staff in home care decreased in 2025 compared to 2024, but it is possible that the decrease is entirely explained by the lower response rate. Taking the non-response into account, the interpretation is that no significant changes occurred in the number of personnel in home care between 2024 and 2025.

Personnel statistics for 24-hour care do not include units for which the submitted data contain suspected obvious errors, resulting in realised staffing ratio of less than 0.25 or greater than 1.50, or units for which staffing ratio cannot be calculated, for example because there were no clients in the unit during the monitoring period.

For home care, units that were prepared to provide home care but had no clients at the time of monitoring have been excluded. In addition, units in which both the planned and realised service hours were zero have been excluded from the service hours statistics. No changes affecting the comparability of the data have occurred as a result of these exclusions.

The monitoring of home care adequacy was revised in 2023, and the statistics were first implemented for the year 2023. In the staffing ratio monitoring, no significant changes affecting comparability have occurred since 2021. In the 2020 data, personnel in combined units were not separated by service type, and the occupational group “Institutional Assistants,” which does not belong to direct client work, was separated into its own occupational group only after the 2020 monitoring.

Institutional mandate

The production of the statistics is based on the The Act on Care Services for Older Persons, the Act on the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, and the Statistics Act.

As a public authority, THL is responsible for producing statistical information on the health and well-being of the population, the factors affecting them, and the use and functioning of social and health services to support decision-making, development, and research. THL’s statistical production practices are guided by Eurostat and Statistics Finland instructions, recommendations, and regulations, as well as statistical ethical principles.

Data sharing and publishing

Statistical publications are released once a year on the publication dates indicated in the statistical release calendar. Data are published simultaneously to all users. Realised staffing ratio is published as a database twice a year.

Confidentiality

As a public authority, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare is obliged to report aggregated information on health and well-being covering the whole country. The data used to produce THL statistics are mainly confidential, and no personal data may be published.

The protection of the processed data is based on the Act on the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (688/2008), the Statistics Act (280/2004), the Act on the Openness of Government Activities (621/1999), the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the Data Protection Act (1050/2018), and other regulations governing the Institute’s operations. THL’s data are protected at all stages of processing. Only those with clearly defined access rights for specific purposes may access the data and data systems. Others have no access to view, process, modify, or delete the data. Written instructions have been established to ensure the protection of the final statistics. All THL personnel are bound by confidentiality obligations.

Special issues concerning the 2025 statistics

The response rate for the staffing ratio monitoring was 99.3 in 2025, 99.5 in 2024, 99.6 in 2023, 99.1 in 2022, 98.1 in 2021, and 98.2 in 2020. The response rate for the home care adequacy monitoring was 85 in 2025 and 90 in 2024 and 2023.

In 24-hour care, four units for 2025, 13 units for 2024, eight units for 2023, two units for 2021, and five units for 2020 have been excluded from the statistics for the reasons described in Section 4.3. The year 2022 includes all 24-hour care units that responded to the monitoring.