Are you following what's happening in the field of integrated long-term care?
Back in 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe - based in Copenhagen, Denmark - launched a study to develop a useful framework for assessing the integrated delivery of long-term care. The resulting report was published online in 2021. It provides guidance for assessing the integrated delivery of health and social services for long-term care.
The assessment framework takes on a "services and system perspective". It serves as a blueprint for collecting data, structuring country visits, synthesising information and drafting an assessment report. The framework identifies the main components for an assessment that can be made according to care needs, entitlements, health and social services, care pathways, the organisation of providers, and system enablers. The document includes pointers for initial desk research with a rich list of sources to access data and conduct research. In it, there are also questionnaires that would help to administer interviews and outlines for conducting workshops and focus groups.
Among the countries in Europe covered by the framework study were Denmark, Germany, Portugal, and Romania as well as Turkey.
A later (2022) WHO Europe report reflects on the impact of the COVID-19 experience and how to rebuild sustainability and resilience in long-term care in Europe. It offers brief country spotlights covering Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Romania, as well as the Russian Federation.
These Europe-wide documents provide useful starting materials for EHTEL community members interested in directions to be taken by the recently-launched Laurel project.
Watch out for this three-year project's investigations that will ultimately lead up to actionable policies, alongside a concrete White Paper and various training tools!
The first event organised by EHTEL in collaboration with the Laurel project was a 16 May 2024 webinar on "Digital transformation of long-term care: innovations from the field". Watch out for the video and PowerPoints which will be available soon.
