How can co-ordination improve long-term care delivery?

This paper discusses different policies to improve the co-ordination of health and care services across different parts of government, providers and organisations to help individuals perform everyday activities (long-term care, LTC). It builds primarily on four case studies: Canada (Québec), Costa Rica, France and Japan, which represent diverse LTC models at different stages of implementation. It discusses four key policy dimensions: governance, funding, workforce and mechanisms for data sharing in the LTC sector. It finds that co-ordination mechanisms are important to have adequate care provision across different sectors (horizontal coordination) and ensure alignment across different levels of governments (vertical coordination). Pooling of funds from the health and the social care sectors to the LTC system and financial incentives to reduce duplications and encourage joined-up work are also used across countries to promote care co-ordination. Countries also rely on a variety of workforce strategies to support care co-ordination, ranging from assigning care managers or co-ordinators, providing training for multidisciplinary care and setting up more structured care pathways or single-entry points for recipients to receive services or be entitled to public support for care. Ensuring shared data and interoperability of operation systems from different providers also facilitate care co-ordination and quality standards, albeit they are challenging to develop.