Help Wanted? Providing and Paying for Long-Term Care

Often, policymakers have treated long-term care reform as being too tough a nut to crack, but there are many examples of good practice worthy of emulation.  Help Wanted? Providing and Financing Long-Term Care addresses these questions. The publication is the outcome of work undertaken at the OECD during 2009 and 2010. A description of the main goals of the project can be found here.
 
The project builds upon on-going LTC data work, the OECD Health Working Paper No. 44 and work on workforce shortages and migration.

A Good Life in Old Age? Monitoring and Improving Quality in Long-Term Care (upcoming 17 June 2013)

Statistics and analysis on LTC typically focus on what “goes in” LTC systems (i.e., inputs, such as human and financial resources) and what “goes out” (i.e., volume outputs, such as service users). Yet policy makers are concerned about outcomes and effectiveness, in other words, about the quality of care delivered to users. Several elements of quality are relevant, ranging from responsiveness and user satisfaction, to user protection (e.g., avoidance of abuse, protection of users’ rights), and maintenance or, where possible, improvements in functioning. Due to difficulties in measuring outcomes, some OECD countries have initially developed measures to regulate and monitor LTC-setting (infra) structures and care processes.

This 2011-2012 project will examine available initiatives and offer suggestions to develop policies on quality and user satisfaction in long-term care (LTC) systems across OECD countries. The project focuses on three main elements: i) Quality monitoring and control systems; ii) Regulation of quality in LTC systems; iii) Policies to address quality shortcomings, including training of carers and LTC workers.

The final publication A Good Life in Old Age? Monitoring and Improving Quality in Long-Term Care will be released on 17 June 2013. The  project is supported by the European Commission (DG Employment).

Strengthening Data on Long-Term Care Systems

OECD Health Data 2012 collects data on long-term care expenditure, recipients of long-term care services and sources of funding for long-term care spending. Revisions to the definition and estimation methods of long-term care expenditure are a key component of the process of revision of the System of Health Accounts (SHA) manual which aims at improving the comparability of LTC expenditure data, as well as feasibility of the estimation methods. A report, Conceptual Framework and Methods for Analysis of Data Sources for Long-Term Care Expenditure, begins to refine the definition methodology to improve the availability and comparability of long-term care expenditure data.

New: access the full dataset on Long-Term Care, as available in OECD Health Data 2012 (Excel file to download)

Health at a Glance 2011: Special Chapter on Long-Term Care

The sixth edition of Health at a Glance (released in November 2011) includes a special chapter on long-term care. Health at a Glance, a flagship OECD publication, provides the latest comparable data on different aspects of the performance of health systems in OECD countries.

Healthy Ageing Policies

A review of current policies to prevent the onset of old-age disability, or so-called “healthy ageing policies” was released in February 2009 as OECD Health Working Paper No. 42. This paper identifies four different groups of policies: i) working longer and promoting social integration; ii) improving lifestyles; iii) adapting health care systems to the needs of the elderly; and iv) attacking underlying social/environmental factors affecting healthy ageing.

Disability

The OECD published Health Working Paper No 26 in 2006, which assesses disability trends among elderly people and the implications for the future number of elderly people who might need long-term care in a dozen OECD countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States).

Another study reviewed the implication of disability for individuals, the labour market and social policies. Disability has become a key economic policy area in most OECD countries, as disabling medical conditions are on the rise among people of working-age.

More information on a related project on mental health can be found at www.oecd.org/els/disability.