Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Researcher Updates Current Data on Global Health Economics and Policy (The impact of long-term care insurance in China on beneficiaries and caregivers: A systematic review): Economics – Global Health Economics and Policy

Hospital & Nursing Home Daily

2022 OCT 21 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Hospital & Nursing Home Daily -- Investigators publish new report on global health economics and policy. According to news reporting out of Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital by NewsRx editors, research stated, “China’s long-term care insurance (LTCI) policy has been minimally evaluated. This systematic review aimed to assess the impact of China’s LTCI pilot on beneficiaries and their caregivers.”

Our news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital: “This review is based on a search of peer-reviewed studies in English (Embase, MEDLINE, Web of Science) and Chinese (China National Knowledge Infrastructure [CNKI], VIP, Wanfang) databases from January 2016 through July 2020, with all studies published in English or Chinese included. We included quantitative analyses of beneficiary-level data that assessed the impact of LTCI on beneficiaries and their caregivers, with no restriction placed on the outcomes studied. Nine studies met our inclusion criteria. One study was a randomised trial and two used quasi-experimental approaches. Four studies examined LTCI’s effect on beneficiaries’ quality of life, physical pain, and health service utilisation; one study reported the effect on beneficiaries’ healthcare expenditures; and one study evaluated the impact on caregivers’ care tasks. These studies generally found LTCI to be associated with an improvement in patients’ quality of life (including decreased physical pain), a reduction in the number of outpatient visits and hospitalisations, decreased patient-level health expenditures (e.g. one study reported a reduction in the length of stay, inpatient expenditures, and health insurance expenditures in tertiary hospitals by 41.0%, 17.7%, and 11.4%, respectively), and reduced informal care tasks for caregivers. In addition, four out of four studies that evaluated this outcome found that beneficiaries’ overall satisfaction with LTCI was high.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “The current evidence base for the effects of LTCI in China on beneficiaries and their caregivers is sparse. Nonetheless, the existing studies suggest that LTCI has positive effects on beneficiaries and their caregivers. Further rigorous research on the impacts of LTCI in China is needed to inform the future expansion of the program.”

For more information on this research see: The impact of long-term care insurance in China on beneficiaries and caregivers: A systematic review. Journal of Global Health Economics and Policy, 2021,1. The publisher for Journal of Global Health Economics and Policy is JoGH Ltd.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.52872/001c.29559.

Our news journalists report that more information may be obtained by contacting Till Barnighausen, Heidelberg Institute of Global Health (HIGH), Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital, Heidelberg University. Additional authors for this research include Simiao Chen, Linye Li, Juntao Yang, Lirui Jiao, Todd Golden, Zhuoran Wang, Haitao Liu, Peixin Wu, Pascal Geldsetzer, Chen Wang.