More and better health and long-term care
There is a growing need for health and long-term care services and the ISSA has made it a priority to build knowledge and share good practices and experiences in this area. These are being looked at from various angles.
Health care
Health care has become a priority on the international agenda, something which is being followed closely by the ISSA. While in some countries there are large parts of the population that do not have any health insurance coverage, in other countries there is not adequate coverage or there are uncovered population groups.
A milestone in the ISSA’s work in health care was the inclusion of a new chapter on regulatory strategies for health in the updated ISSA Guidelines on Administrative Solutions for Coverage Extension, which were launched in October 2022. This was followed by a webinar series to illustrate these guidelines with concrete country cases and institutional experiences,
in cooperation with the Technical Commission on Medical Care and Sickness Insurance. The series looked at overall regulatory strategies, as well as specific topics like prevention, health care products and financial sustainability.
Other webinars in the last year addressed digital innovation, eHealth, building more resilient health systems and environmental protection in health care. With climate change becoming increasingly acute, environmental sustainability will become increasingly important for social security and health care institutions.
Long-term care
Long-term-care is another area that will continue to increase in importance as the challenges of population ageing reaches all regions of the world. Societies are preparing for a surge in a wide diversity of care needs for the elderly, ranging from medical and health services to support daily life, due to a loss of autonomy. In turn, social security and health systems face important barriers to addressing these needs, notably fragmented schemes and programmes, workforce shortages and informality, and the need to ensure sustainable financing of long-term care services.
As this will be a concern for social security institutions in all regions in the years ahead, the ISSA is determined to continue assisting its member by bringing forward knowledge and facilitating the exchange of experiences and good practices. During the ISSA Forum for Technical Commissions in March 2023, it was agreed to develop new ISSA Guidelines on administrative solutions for long-term care, which will take a cross-cutting perspective starting with health, pensions and employment.
In the last year, ISSA continued its webinar series on health and long-term care.
There has been focus on innovation, including a webinar on digitalization, alternative care settings and workforce, and one looking at the use of artificial intelligence in health care.
Building resilient health care systems has been another important topic, and a specific webinar series on extending health care coverage was rolled out from the beginning of 2023.
All webinar recordings are available on the ISSA website.
At the World Social Security Forum in Morocco, in October 2022, a new version of the ISSA Guidelines on Administrative Solutions for Coverage Extension was launched. These guidelines now include a chapter on “Defining a Regulatory Strategy to Ensure the Sustainability of Health Coverage and Build Confidence across the Population”. This was followed up in a webinar series from February 2023. In 2023 starts work on new ISSA Guidelines on long-term care, which will be ready in 2025.
ISSA and ILO are working closely together to promote the long-term care agenda, taking a comprehensive approach to both policy and implementation issues.
In September 2022, the ISSA and ILO published an article on the role of social protection policies in a special edition of the International Social Security Review on “The human right to long-term care for the elderly: Extending the role of social security programmes”.
In October 2022, the same authors published the joint working paper Long-term care in the context of population ageing: a rights-based approach to universal coverage.
The ISSA Technical Commission on Medical Care and Sickness Insurance plays an active role in developing and sharing new knowledge in these areas. It has contributed to new guidelines on the regulation of health coverage, to the organization of webinars on health and long-term care and discussions at major ISSA events.
The ISSA is working closely on health and long-term care with international partners such as the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the European Commission.
