Researchers from University of Tsukuba Detail Findings in COVID-19 (Changes in long-term care insurance revenue among service providers during the COVID-19 pandemic): Coronavirus – COVID-19

2024 MAY 01 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Hospital & Nursing Home Daily -- Fresh data on COVID-19 are presented in a new report. According to news reporting from the University of Tsukuba by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted peoples’ health-related behaviors, especially those of older adults, who have restricted their activities in order to avoid contact with others. Moreover, the pandemic has caused concerns in long-term care insurance (LTCI) providers regarding management and financial issues.”

Funders for this research include Joint Research By Sms Co. Ltd..

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from University of Tsukuba: “This study aimed to examine the changes in revenues among LTCI service providers in Japan during the pandemic and analyze its impact on different types of services. In this study, we used anonymized data from ‘Kaipoke,’ a management support platform for older adult care operators provided by SMS Co., Ltd. Kaipoke provides management support services to more than 27,400 care service offices nationwide and has been introduced in many home-care support offices. The data used in this study were extracted from care plans created by care managers on the Kaipoke platform. To examine the impact of the pandemic, an interrupted time-series analysis was conducted in which the date of the beginning of the pandemic was set as the prior independent variable. The participating providers were care management providers (n = 5,767), home-visit care providers (n = 3,506), home-visit nursing providers (n = 971), and adult day care providers (n = 4,650). The results revealed that LTCI revenues decreased significantly for care management providers, home-visit nursing providers, and adult day care providers after the COVID-19 pandemic began. The largest decrease was an average base of USD - 1668.8 in adult day care.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “The decrease in revenue among adult day care providers was particularly concerning in terms of the sustainability of their business. This decrease in revenue may have made it difficult to retain personnel, and staff may have needed to be laid off as a result. Although this study has limitations, it may provide useful suggestions for countermeasures in such scenarios, in addition to support conducted measures.”

For more information on this research see: Changes in long-term care insurance revenue among service providers during the COVID-19 pandemic. BMC Health Services Research, 2024,24(1):1-8. (BMC Health Services Research - http://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com). The publisher for BMC Health Services Research is BMC.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-10832-4.

Our news editors report that more information may be obtained by contacting Tomoko Ito, Institute of Medicine, University of Tsukuba. Additional authors for this research include Xueying Jin, Makiko Tomita, Shu Kobayashi, Nanako Tamiya.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)