Elderly homes without profit requirements are the best

Published 28 February 2024 at 11.19

Domestic. Sweden's best non-municipal elderly homes are run by non-profit actors such as idea-based businesses, research from the University of Gothenburg shows.

Share the article

TwittraShare

Today run around 20 percent of all nursing homes under non-municipal auspices. The new study shows that these actors are differently good at delivering high quality care to the elderly.

– Nursing homes run by non-profit organizations are of the highest quality. The lowest quality is maintained by nursing homes run by listed companies and venture capital companies. In the middle of these are nursing homes run by for-profit private companies, says political scientist Rasmus Broms.

Together with two other political scientists, Carl Dahlström and Marina Nistotskaya, he has investigated how the form of operation affects the quality of non-municipally run nursing homes in Sweden. The researchers have compared four different forms of operation: non-profit organizations and foundations, private companies, listed companies and venture capital companies. They investigated staff density, access to nurses, the staff's level of education, resident satisfaction, and how well the residents updated their action plans. The analyzes are based on 2,639 non-municipal nursing homes between the years 2012 and 2019.

The results thus show that non-profit organizations such as idea-based activities are generally the best at elderly care in Sweden. These do not deal with profit distribution but reinvest their financial surplus in the business.

– Here we see the highest staffing density, many nurses, the most competent care staff in terms of education, and the most satisfied users.

Among the for-profit care companies, the quality is best in nursing homes run by private companies. These facilities are characterized by a high staff density and the staff are generally more well-educated compared to facilities run by companies that are listed on the stock market or owned by venture capital companies.

– Although we have not studied the municipal operations in more detail in this the survey, we see that in terms of quality, municipal nursing homes fall somewhere between those run by non-profit organizations and for-profit private companies. Our analyzes show that non-municipal actors can deliver high-quality welfare services, but that there are significant variations. This is worth considering when a municipality procures the operation of a residence, says Rasmus Broms in a press release.