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Article History

Received: 27 August 2019

Accepted: 5 April 2020

First Online: 5 May 2020

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: Retrospective register-based studies in which the subjects are not contacted are not considered medical research by Finnish legislation (Medical Research Act 1999/488 § 2) [] and, therefore, ethics committee approval was not required. Finnish legislation (Data Protection Act 2018/1050, 4§ and 31§) [] and European Union General Data Protection Regulation (Directive 95/46/EC, art. 6.1e, 9.2j and 89.2) [] allow retrospective use of health-related data for scientific research without informed consent, and according to Finnish legislation (Act on the Publicity of Official Documents 1999/621 § 28) [], the owner of the register in question (a local/municipal authority in the context of our study) gives permission for use of such data. Research plan was institutionally reviewed and permission to use the interRAI-PAC assessments and hospital discharge records was hence obtained from the administration of the City of Tampere (decision the Director of Hospital Services, in August 30, 2016).

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.