GLOSSARY

This refers to the care system of a country or a region. It may also refers to a Large Maintenance Health Organisation which provides care in several setting across a country)

Unit of analysis in service research which describes the main characteristic of the care provided in every single service or ‘micro-organisation’ within a catchment area (meso-organization). MTCs are the building blocks of the classification provided by the DESDE-LTC system. This system describes 89 MTCs using a tree approach with branches and sub-branches according to a series of descriptors based on activity, location, time-frame, intensity, and type of staff required. Main branches include information on care, accessibility to care, self-help and voluntary care, outpatient care, day care and residential care. Services are arranged or organised either as a single MTC or in cluster combination of MTCs. These clusters emulate “bar codes”, identifying service characteristics according to MTCs. Thus, the same service might include one main type of care coded in Branch D as a Day service and other classified as residential in Branch R. MTC availability and use can be compared across areas regardless of how services are named. MTC cluster patterns could be also compared across areas. The same term (i.e. ‘Information’) may be coded as the MTC in a service, while it may be code simple activity in another service.

A framework developed for assessing long term care which divide care components and indicators in 9 boxes related to two domains: Process (input, process and output) and Level (macro, meso and micro level) (Tansella & Thornicroft, 1998).

Maximum number of times that a service user can be assisted by the service if they require need in ordinary care conditions.

Care provided or care organisation in small areas (municipality, small health district, community mental health centre which provides are in a sector).

A care organisation which includes several services within the same location (i.e. a general hospital)

The minimum administrative nit which can be identified a small care area. See ‘service’

In home & mobile facilities contact with users occurs in a range of settings including users’ homes, as judged most appropriate by professionals and users. For a service to be classified as ‘home & mobile’, at least 50% of contacts should take place away from the premises at which the service is based. If mobile care is provided at least for 20% of contacts a secondary mobile code should be added to the MTC Non-mobile code. In other cases of mobile outpatient care an additional qualifier “d” could be provided to describe its mobile activity. For some services, the main site of provision may vary from day to day (e.g. services in rural areas which move from village to village) – this does not mean they should be classified as ‘home & mobile’ unless staff go and do work at locations away from that day’s main site.

Main type of intervention (or activity) that can possibly be applied to achieve one of the restricted number of tasks that together comprise the whole range of Long-Term Care. (De Jong, 2000)