Overview

The number of elderly people relying on formal long-term care services is dramatically increasing year after year, and the challenge of ensuring the quality and financial stability of care provision is one faced by governments in both the developed and developing world. This book by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies is the first to provide a comprehensive international survey of long-term care provision and regulation, built around a series of case studies from Europe, North America and Asia. The analytical framework allows the different approaches that countries have adopted to be compared side by side and readers are encouraged to consider which quality assurance approaches might best meet their own country's needs. Wider issues underpinning the need to regulate the quality of long-term care are also discussed. This timely book is a valuable resource for policymakers working in the health care sector, researchers and students taking graduate courses on health policy and management.

• Provides a comprehensive survey of different approaches to the structuring and regulating of long-term care quality, using a series of case studies from Europe, North America and Asia
• Broad range of international comparison: readers can examine the different approaches that developed and developing countries have adopted (including in-depth information about how different long-term care systems are organized and financed)
• Introductory chapter sets out important themes and trends to highlight wider issues underpinning the need to regulate the quality of long-term care, while the final chapter summarizes and analyses all the country-specific case studies to highlight policy options and their advantages and disadvantages