Social Sciences, Vol. 15, Pages 125: Assessment of Home- and Community-Based Long-Term Care Centers in Taiwan

Social Sciences doi: 10.3390/socsci15020125

Authors:
Jui-Ying Hung

In Taiwan, with the increase in the elderly population and the emergence of a super-aging society, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) has developed various long-term care (LTC) centers, offering different types of services to effectively improve the overall service quality. The Taiwanese LTC Service Quality Enhancement Plan, based on Articles 5 and 39 of the LTC Services Act and Article 3 of the Regulations Governing the Assessment of LTC Centers, seeks to realize guidance, supervision, inspection, and assessment, and reward successful actions. One of the most important purposes of LTC service assessment auditing is to guide the subsidization of LTC facilities by the MOHW. In this study, a rigorous and impartial assessment system was used to measure the service quality of the majority of the LTC centers (approximately 92.07%) in a county in Taiwan from 2023 to 2025, covering both community-based service centers (daycare centers) and home-care centers. According to the results, the perceived service quality is a multidimensional and multilayered reflection of the intrinsic assessment results, rather than a value judgment based solely on interim results. It is suggested that customer-oriented and customer rights concepts should be progressively introduced when planning and designing assessments of the implications and effectiveness of LTC services, with differences in competitive strategies between centers. Moreover, according to this study, LTC centers should focus on case-centered, integrated professional care and seek to establish a continuous competitive advantage. With the increasing burden on informal caregivers and the gradual disappearance of traditional family care functions, maintaining the most basic levels of safety and professional care to ensure the quality of LTC services is crucial, seeking to ensure the sustainable development of the care system and realize significant socioeconomic benefits.

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Jui-Ying Hung www.mdpi.com