LTCcovid Country Profiles

Responses to 4.01. Reforms to address Long-Term Care governance

Finland

An EU report notes that Finland has launched programme for health and social services centres for the future, which will be implemented in 2020-2022 and where patients will have access to various services in one place (e.g. primary healthcare, local social work, and homecare services). Moreover, the responsibility for organising health and social will be transferred from the municipalities to 22 regional authorities to provide better access to LTC. Finland also took steps in 2018 to improve the sharing of individual social welfare information in the national archive with care institutions at county level, to improve care management.

Last updated: November 24th, 2021

France

A?fifth pillar of social security?was introduced around long-term care. Social care policy (termed policy of long-term care) will be steered between the Caisse nationale de solidarite pour l’autonomie (CNSA, which becomes a true insurance fund), and local authorities (the decentralised level). There are?plans?over? 2020-2022 to improve and modernise local authorities’ single points of access for the disabled (Maison Departementale des Personnes Handicapées) or for disabled and elderly (Maison Departementale de l’Autonomie), which help people who draw on care access care and support by providing services such as information, care assessments and planning, follow-up, and medication. The centres are made up of multi-disciplinary teams including doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, care workers, and inclusion specialists. 

Following the?Segur de la sante?(wide stakeholder engagement in 2020 to recover and build resilience in health and care), a national investment strategy was adopted and is devolved from national to regional level. This gives greater decision-making power to regional structures (ARS) to enable them to be closer to local needs and reduce complexity/length of allocation and increase clarity/transparency around decision-making.  

Key measures from the Segur include (sources: here and here): 

• Revaluing the workforce: Pay increases awarded to staff working in health and long-term care 

• Investing in quality of estates: €1.5 billion awarded to modernise care and nursing home infrastructure and develop new models, and €125 million for daily investments (e.g. refurbishments, new equipment etc.) 

• Improving quality of care: Reinforcing hospitalisation at home, mobile geriatric teams, access to end-of-life and geriatric networks through mobile teams, investment in improving care for working age disabled people through e.g. universal access to remote consultation. 

• Investing in data and innovation: €2 billion awarded to health hand long-term care to improve data and digital, including €600 million for care and nursing homes, and with a commitment to creating shared care records accessed by all including people who use care 

Last updated: October 23rd, 2024   Contributors: Camille Oung  |  Alis Sopadzhiyan  |  

Mexico

There is evidence of the need to formally develop a National Care System that provides support to those in need of care and their families, and that includes LTCFs. In view of the challenges due to the lack of information and competencies in infection prevention and control at LTCFs, a group of experts, in collaboration with different public institutions, joined efforts with the purpose to update the guidelines in order to allow LTCFs face the pandemic and to contribute to the generation of a National Care System.

Source:

Mena-Madrazo, J. A., Sosa-Tinoco, E., Flores-Castro, M., López-Ortega, M., & Gutiérrez-Robledo, L. M. (2021). COVID-19 and long-term care facilities in Mexico: a debt that cannot be postponed. COVID-19 e instituciones de cuidados a largo plazo en México: una deuda impostergable. Gaceta medica de Mexico, 157(1), 94–96. https://doi.org/10.24875/GMM.20000549

Last updated: November 30th, 2021   Contributors: William Byrd  |