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Reforming Long‐term Care in Portugal: Dealing with the Multidimensional Character of Quality
Author(s) -
Santana Silvina
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
social policy and administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9515
pISSN - 0144-5596
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9515.2010.00726.x
Subject(s) - term (time) , quality (philosophy) , action (physics) , field (mathematics) , character (mathematics) , service (business) , management science , process management , quality management , business , risk analysis (engineering) , sociology , epistemology , marketing , economics , physics , geometry , mathematics , quantum mechanics , philosophy , pure mathematics
This article provides an overview of the informal and institutional setting of long‐term care in Portugal and focuses on service quality, discussing it alongside broader problems related to the organization of long‐term care in the country. We argue that quality assessment and management are critical actions that must be implemented alongside major efforts being made and that quality must be understood, researched and pursued as a multidimensional and complex aspect, entailing objective but also subjective dimensions and a plethora of actors and modelling factors. We conclude that the information and data available are clearly insufficient to support any deep analysis of the situation and field action, and that this represents an important opportunity for further investigation and practice improvement.