The WHO Centre for Health Development (WHO Kobe Centre – WKC) supports research that sheds light on financing long-term care (LTC) to ensure that older people receive needed care without financial hardship.
The final background summary of WKC’s series, “Catastrophic expenditures and impoverishment linked to out of pocket payments (OOP) for long-term care services at home in Europe,” by Ricardo Jorge Alcobia Granja Rodrigues of the Lisbon School of Economics and Management, reviewed data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to study the effects on poverty of OOP payments for LTC services at home for people aged 60 and older in 14 European countries* between 2013-2015.
Key findings:
- Many countries in Europe require OOP payments for publicly funded home-based LTC services, except in Denmark and Ireland where OOP payments are not required for LTC services at home.
- In Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden and Switzerland, 25% - 30% of people aged 60+ who use these services are already poor before paying OOP for services – indicating that older adults using these services are less able to cope with even limited OOP payments.
- OOP payments may cause poverty or constitute catastrophic expenditure for those using LTC services at home. In Greece, Italy and Spain, 20% or more of those using these services experienced catastrophic spending after paying OOP for LTC services at home.
- In all countries – except the Netherlands and Spain – catastrophic expenditures are concentrated among poor households.
Read more about this work here: https://wkc.who.int/our-work/uhc-research/sustainable-financing
*Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland