Health coaching of diabetes and cardiac patients may lead to significant savings in the public healthcare system.
Health coaching is a practice in which health professionals apply counselling and coaching techniques to assist their patients to achieve positive health and lifestyle outcomes.
The regional of Päijät-Häme believes that its system of phone-based coaching will create hundreds of thousands of euros in savings in healthcare costs.
Most of the patients involved in the programme are pensioners and the coaching is free of charge.
In Lahti, healthcare specialists keep in touch with around 700 patients in the area by phone. Each of these diabetes or cardiac patients gets a half-hour call a month to review his or her current condition.
"The Finns are rather conscientious people. They know how to take advice and apply it to their own health problems," says Päivi Suikki of Medineuvo, a company that organizes health coaching services for public health centres.
Health coaching services were started in the UK two years ago and were found to clearly reduce the number of visits that patients made to doctors.
In Finland, the method has been introduced with the same target in mind, as cutbacks are scheduled over the next few years that will reduce the capacity to deal with direct patient care.
