The University’s occupational healthcare in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area will continue to be provided by Mehiläinen. Elsewhere in Finland, Suomen Terveystalo will be the main provider of occupational healthcare from 2015.

The University’s occupational healthcare services were subjected to competitive tendering last spring in cooperation with Hansel. The winning tenderer in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area was Mehiläinen, and elsewhere in Finland, Suomen Terveystalo. The tendering process emphasised both price and quality.

The new agreements will be valid until the end of 2019.

Campus info sessions in November

Thanks to the division of occupational healthcare services to two separate national healthcare providers, the level of services can be monitored and developed more efficiently than before.

“We will be able to stay on top of the developments in occupational healthcare when we can take advantage of two different providers. The staff will benefit from high-quality occupational healthcare services throughout the country,” states Human Resources Coordinator Hannele Rönkkö of the Occupational Wellbeing unit, under the University's Human Resources and Legal Affairs.

In the Metropolitan Helsinki Area, existing relationships with care providers remain intact, as Mehiläinen continues to be the University's occupational healthcare provider. This is particularly significant for long-term care cases.

Occupational healthcare practices and the details of the agreements will be negotiated with the providers later this autumn, once the procurement decision becomes legally valid.

“In November, the Occupational Wellbeing unit will organise campus info sessions to explain the new occupational healthcare agreement, occupational safety and the model of early support in both Finnish and English.  You can sign up for these sessions right now through the Henkka staff training calendar,” Rönkkö explains.

Evaluating ethics

Mehiläinen has recently been in the news due to layoffs and suspicions of tax evasion. Some University staff members have criticised the company for being unethical.

If the competitive tendering employed both price and quality as criteria, why not ethics?

“Ethical considerations are included in Hansel’s framework agreement for competitive tendering.  Mehiläinen complies with the criteria for the Hansel framework agreement and the tendering,” Rönkkö says.

Matti Bergendahl, the CEO of Mehiläinen, explains that he met with different University of Helsinki staff groups during the tax scandal in the spring of 2012. He vouches to maintain similarly open communications with the University in the future.

“We strive to make our operations increasingly transparent. One example of this is the tax footprint, available on our website, which is part of our corporate responsibility programme,” states Bergendahl.

The Mehiläinen tax footprint (in Finnish)

Text: Tiina Palomäki
Translation: University of Helsinki Language Services