Converting threats from COVID-19 in long term care into opportunities for improvement

COVID-19 Intervention Scenarios for a Long-term Disease Management

Background The first outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was successfully restrained in many countries around the world by means of a severe lockdown. Now, we are entering the second phase of the pandemics in which the spread of the virus needs to be contained within the limits that national health systems can cope with. This second phase of the epidemics is expected to last until a...

The Evolution of Long-term Care Programs; Comment on “Financing Long-term Care: Lessons From Japan”

The need for long-term care (LTC) represents a “new social risk,” one that overlaps with and complements systems of care that pre-date such programs, complicating LTC program design. This commentary expands on Ikegami’s discussion of how these structural factors must be accommodated, as well as historical and cultural factors that influence public expectations of such a...

Financing Long-Term Care: Lessons From Japan

Long-term care (LTC) must be carefully delineated when expenditures are compared across countries because how LTC services are defined and delivered differ in each country. LTC’s objectives are to compensate for functional decline and mitigate the care burden of the family. Governments have tended to focus on the poor but Germany opted to make LTC universally available ...

Current Status of Long-term Care in Taiwan: Transition of Long-term Care Plan From 1.0 to 2.0

Financing Long-term Care: Some Ideas From Switzerland; Comment on “Financing Long-term Care: Lessons From Japan”

Ikegami reviews the implementation of mandatory long-term care insurance systems in Germany and Japan, which are organized as pay-as-you-go systems. I propose to go one step further and implement a multi-pillar, mandatory and voluntary long-term care financing system, which combines pay-as-you-go with capital-funded elements. The proposal is based on the observation tha...