Promoting quality management in long-term care: a call for collaborative improvement
Published on: 12-03-2025
The Global Observatory of Long-Term Care (GOLTC), together with Vilans colleague Bellis van den Berg, recently hosted the first webinar of the Special Interest Group on Quality Improvement in Long-Term Care (SIG on QI), bringing together international experts, policymakers, and practitioners to discuss the future of quality management in long-term care (LTC).
This session focused on the need for a shift from quality assurance towards a continuous quality management approach, as highlighted in the recent WHO report Promoting Quality Management in Long-Term Care: Principles, Key Components, and Directions for Policy Action.
Rethinking quality in long-term care
The WHO report underscores that high-quality LTC services are fundamental to ensuring dignity, safety, and well-being for care recipients. It emphasizes that quality management must be person-centered, integrated across health and social care systems, and embedded in a framework that prioritizes safe, effective, and equitable services. A key takeaway from the report is the need for a flexible and community oriented approach that adapts to diverse care settings and evolving needs.
The webinar featured key presentations from experts, including Stefania Ilinca, a technical officer, WHO European region, provided an overview of the WHO report's principles and policy directions. Cassandra Simmons, a consultant for long term care, WHO European region, shared insights on translating these quality management principles into practical strategies at the national and local levels.
Key insights from the webinar
The presentation highlighted five essential elements of quality management in LTC:
- User Engagement: ensuring that care recipients are at the center of decision-making, with their preferences guiding service delivery and monitoring.
- Needs Assessment: defining and establishing care needs and eligibility for benefits/services.
- Workforce Development: strengthening training, qualifications, and incentives for health and care professionals to foster a culture of continuous improvement.
- Governance: clear division of roles; accountability; setting goals at service delivery and system level.
- Digital Technologies: leveraging data and technology to improve service coordination, track care quality, and enhance efficiency in care provision.
The SIG on Quality Improvement in Long-Term Care
The SIG on Quality Improvement in Long-Term Care is a collaborative initiative within the Global Observatory of Long-Term Care (GOLTC). The interest group serves as a platform to bring together policy makers, researchers, experts, practitioners, as well as people with lived experiences: diverse stakeholders from different regions of the world and explore innovative strategies for improving LTC quality worldwide. By facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration, the SIG aims to drive meaningful progress in quality management through evidence based policymaking, client centered approaches, and continuous learning.
Our interest group aims to bring different stakeholder in long-term care and create the opportunity to collaborate in tackling common sustainability challenge of good-quality long-term care in the face of rapidly ageing population, rising care demand, increasing workforce shortage and soaring cost of care.
Bellis van den Berg, Steering group member
The SIG organizes regularly webinars, discussions, and knowledge-sharing sessions to engage its members in the latest research and practices for quality improvement. Its activities focus on knowledge and experience sharing about quality improvement and management, collaborating in research projects and building knowledge repository for quality improvement.
As the SIG on QI moves forward, collaboration will be key to implementing effective quality management strategies. The group will continue to explore ways to engage its members in similar discussions and other collaborative works to ensure that LTC systems worldwide evolve to meet the needs of both care recipients and providers.
