Safeguarding good quality in long-term care: the Austrian approach

This paper provides an overview of quality regulation and initiatives to improve the quality of long-term care in Austria. It starts off describing the regulations public authorities have issued to assure good quality in long-term care. While most of these regulations focus on structure (and process) related aspects of quality, there are also initiatives to measure the quality of long-term care outcomes. Two of these promising approaches will be discussed in further detail. The first example deals with the Austrian national quality certificate for care homes (NQZ) that has recently been developed. The second example looks at a tool that aims to assure the quality of outcomes for informal and professional care provision for dependent people living at home.