Preferences for home- and community-based long-term care services in Germany: a discrete choice experiment

T. Lehnert, O. H. Günther, A. Hajek, S. G. Riedel-Heller and H. H. König ()
Additional contact information
T. Lehnert: University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf
O. H. Günther: University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf
A. Hajek: University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf
S. G. Riedel-Heller: University of Leipzig
H. H. König: University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf

The European Journal of Health Economics, 2018, vol. 19, issue 9, No 2, 1213-1223

Abstract: Abstract Background Most people prefer to “age in place” and to remain in their homes for as long as possible even in case they require long-term care. While informal care is projected to decrease in Germany, the use of home- and community-based services (HCBS) can be expected to increase in the future. Preference-based data on aspects of HCBS is needed to optimize person-centered care. Objective To investigate preferences for home- and community-based long-term care services packages. Design Discrete choice experiment conducted in mailed survey. Setting and participants Randomly selected sample of the general population aged 45–64 years in Germany (n = 1.209). Main variables studied Preferences and marginal willingness to pay (WTP) for HCBS were assessed with respect to five HCBS attributes (with 2–4 levels): care time per day, service level of the HCBS provider, quality of care, number of different caregivers per month, co-payment. Results Quality of care was the most important attribute to respondents and small teams of regular caregivers (1–2) were preferred over larger teams. Yet, an extended range of services of the HCBS provider was not preferred over a more narrow range. WTP per hour of HCBS was €8.98. Conclusions Our findings on preferences for HCBS in the general population in Germany add to the growing international evidence of preferences for LTC. In light of the great importance of high care quality to respondents, reimbursement for services by HCBS providers could be more strongly linked to the quality of services.

Keywords: Preferences; Discrete choice experiment; Long-term care; Old age assistance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I13 I18 I19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10198-018-0968-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eujhec:v:19:y:2018:i:9:d:10.1007_s10198-018-0968-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10198/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10198-018-0968-0

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J.-M.G.v.d. Schulenburg

More articles in The European Journal of Health Economics from Springer, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().