Long-term care

How can we ensure that everyone has access to high-quality long-term care while keeping public expenditures and the burden for informal caregivers in check? This is a major concern in the Netherlands and many other countries. Virtually everyone has a friend or relative who needs this care and more than half of the population moves to a nursing home at some point in their life. And in terms of expenditures, long-term care is the second largest category of care behind hospital care. On top of this, informal caregivers provide much care to relatives, friends and neighbors.

Research that informs decisions

We contribute to a better understanding of major policy issues by studying the trade-offs that policy makers, providers, patients and their family face. We answer these questions through quantitative research of administrative data and survey data. The results help the elderly and policy makers to choose how to determine and how to spend the long-term care budget. We collaborate with researchers in the Netherlands and abroad and regularly meet with policy makers, patient representatives and others to discuss our results and our plans.

Recent research on long-term care

We have recently published about:

• Ageing-in-place: Are the elderly better off with care at home or in a nursing home? (article, summary in Dutch)
• Access to care: do all Dutch elderly have equal access to long-term care? (article)
• Private payments: how much do elderly pay out-of-pocket for nursing home care? Does this affect the timing of the admission? (example 1, example 2, example 3)
• Informal caregiving: who provides informal care to whom? What are the consequences of this for the well-being and labor market outcomes of the caregiver? And does it limit reliance on publicly funded long-term care? (example 1, example 2)
• Measuring well-being: how can we measure the well-being of the elderly? (example)

Media coverage and videos

• “Eigen bijdrage verpleeghuis moet eerlijker worden verdeeld” (NOS)
• “How to talk about healthcare costs” (TEDxErasmus University on YouTube)
• “Mantelzorgers in loondienst bij zorgorganisatie” (Volkskrant)
• “Onderzoek: private equity bevordert slechte zorg in Amerikaanse verpleeghuizen” (FD)

Contact

Questions or remarks? Click on one of the publications or researcher profiles above for more information or send us an e-mail.

Want to stay updated? Follow @healtheconrdam on Twitter.