Browsing by Subject "medical rehabilitation"

Aims: Public health care in Finland has the main responsibility of rehabilitation, which means that public health care has to provide for persons with the severe disabilities the therapy or the rehabilitation needed. If a person fulfills the criteria of having severe disablity he is admitted Disability Allowance at its middle or highest rate. This is required for getting medical rehabilitation for persons with severe disabilities, which in Finland is financed by KELA. The speech therapy for the severely disabled organized by KELA is mainly carried out by private sector. There were approximately 500 private speech therapists under the contract of KELA during 2011-2014. Altogether 7439 persons were receiving speech therapy by KELA in 2014. The speech therapists under the contract of KELA are divided somewhat unevenly in Finland, therefore the availability of speech therapy is not equal in the whole land. Particularly areas with less inhabitants seem to suffer from inequality. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 3.5.2008 was aimed at guaranteeing equal human rights to disabled people and to promote and support their human value. Methods: This Master's thesis looks at the availability of speech therapy in Finland both quantitatively based on open statistics by KELA and qualitatively on the nature of positive and negative decisions in the Medical District of Kanta-Häme. Results and Conclusions: The availability of speech therapy for persons with severe disabilities is not by KELAs statistics fully equal in Finland. The uneven division of speech therapists has lead to the fact that there are for example, at the insurance district of Oulu considerably more speech therapists than at the insurance district of Satakunta.The speech therapists under contract of KELA are like many other highly educated people situated close by the universities and other schooling areas, By U.N agreement the persons with disabilities should have rehabilitation near where they live and timing it optimally.The severity of language impairment was the main reason in positive decisions in the Medical District of Kanta-Häme and the insufficiency of arguments in the negative ones, which seem to refer to the fact that there, with an adequate application, speech therapy is guaranteed for the persons with most severe disabilities. One of the aims of the future social welfare and health care reform is to improve the availability of speech therapy in Finland. It remains to be seen how successfully it will answer the growing need.