Three Perspectives to Support Public Decision-Making and Procurement of Care Services and Technologies: Learning From Finnish Case Studies

Decisions on procurement or production of services and technologies for the elderly have become a major point of interest for municipalities, as the share of elderly people of the population as a whole and the costs of elderly care are continuing to rise in the majority of countries. Traditionally, in public tenders, the acquisition price is emphasised instead of the life cycle costs and benefits. However, a more holistic contemplation of costs and benefits would improve the quality of procurement considerably. In addition, the perspectives of different stakeholders and co-operation between public and private actors should be taken into account more extensively. The goal of the study is to describe how the costs and benefits of elderly services can be analysed more holistically and used to support the decision-making, taking into consideration the different stakeholder perspectives. In this article, the costs and benefits are analysed in three case studies. The cases highlight the different perspectives that should be taken into account while making decisions on the procurement of services or technologies.