Oecd Health Policy Studies Improving Long Term Care In Croatia

The demand for help with daily activities – so-called long-term care – is set to increase in Croatia. The population is ageing at a faster rate than the EU average, and by 2050, about one-third of the population is projected to be aged 65 years and over.

The demand for help with daily activities - so-called long-term care - is set to increase in Croatia. The population is ageing at a faster rate than the EU average, and by 2050, about one-third of the population is projected to be aged 65 years and over. In addition, with one of the highest poverty rates among older people in EU countries, at 30%, most older people cannot afford long-term care without public support. However, the long-term care system is both fragmented, with multiple benefits and services across different providers, and underfunded with public expenditure among the lowest across EU countries. As a result, long-term care remains unaffordable for most people even after receiving public support, leading to gaps in access, inequities, and a strong reliance on relatives to provide the bulk of long-term care. This report suggests avenues to improve access and equity of long-term care and proposes policy recommendations to enhance the support for family carers.

This report presents the most up-to-date and comprehensive cross-country assessment of long-term care (LTC) workers, the tasks they perform and the policies to address shortages in OECD countries. It highlights the importance of improving working conditions in the sector and making care work more attractive and shows that there is space to increase productivity by enhancing the use of technology, providing a better use of skills and investing in prevention.

This book examines the challenges countries are facing with regard to providing and paying for long-term care.

This study reports on the latest trends in long-term care policies in nineteen OECD countries and studies lessons learned from countries that undertook major reforms over the past decade.

With more chronic conditions and an ageing population, a growing share of the population will need end-of-life care, reaching close to 10 million people by 2050. While end-of-life care services help improve quality of life through relieving pain and other symptoms, currently, there are substantial gaps in the provision of services.

This book offers evidence and examples of useful experiences to help policy makers, providers and experts measure and improve the quality of long-term care services.

Payers for health care are pursuing a variety of policies as part of broader efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of care. Payment reform is but one policy tool to improve health system performance that requires supportive measures in place such as policies with well-developed stakeholder involvement, information on quality, clear criteria for tariff setting, and embedding evaluation as part of the policy process. Countries should not, however, underestimate the significant data challenges when looking at price setting processes. Data access and ways to overcome its fragmentation require well-developed infrastructures. Policy efforts highlight a trend towards aligning payer and provider incentives by using evidence-based clinical guidelines and outcomes to inform price setting. There are signs of increasing policy focus on outcomes to inform price setting. These efforts could bring about system-wide effects of using evidence along with a patient-centred focus to improve health care delivery and performance in the long-run.