To What Extent Is Long-term Care Representative of Elderly Care? A Case Study of Elderly Care Financing in Lombardy, Italy

Brenna, Elenka; Gitto, Lara

doi:10.15171/ijhpm.2017.22

To What Extent Is Long-term Care Representative of Elderly Care? A Case Study of Elderly Care Financing in Lombardy, Italy

Document Type : Debate

Authors

Elenka Brenna ¹

Lara Gitto ²

¹ Department of Economics and Finance, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy

² CEIS EEHTA (Economic Evaluation & Health Technology Assessment), Università di Roma “Tor Vergata,” Roma, Italy

10.15171/ijhpm.2017.22

Abstract

The ageing of European population has been rapidly increasing during the last decades, and the problem of elderly care financing has become an issue for policy-makers. Long-term care (LTC) financing is considered a suitable proxy of the resources committed to elderly care by each government, but the preciseness of this approximation depends on the extent to which LTC is representative of elderly care within each country. Since there is a broad heterogeneity in LTC funding, organization and setting among European States, it is difficult to find a common parameter representing the public resources destined to the elderly care. We address these topics employing as a case study an Italian region, Lombardy, which in terms of population, dimension, healthcare organization and economic development could be compared to other European countries. The method we suggest, which consists basically in a careful estimate of all the public resources employed in the provision of services exclusively destined to the elderly, could be applied, with the due differences, to other European countries or regions.

Keywords

Long-term Care (LTC) Services

Elderly Care Financing

European LTC Policies

Subjects

Health Policy Analysis

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