Long-term care (LTC) includes the full range of health, personal care, and social services provided at home and in the community for a continuing period to adults who lack or have lost the capacity to care fully for themselves and remain independent (Dearborn Financial Publishing 1997). A narrower but fairly common view is that LTC encompasses principally residential and institutional accommodation for older persons with special care needs. However, "long-term care" is a broad term, variously defined and interpreted in different countries and even within individual health and social care systems. As distinct from acute care, LTC is not primarily curative but aims to maintain people either in the community or in residential (institutional) settings of various sorts.

Much discussion of LTC has focused, for demographic reasons, on care for elderly people. They are the main user groups in LTC, although long-term care users also include adults...