Elements for successful integration processes in long-term care services: Some concluding remarks

The efforts made in the selected countries to tackle evident problems at the interfaces between health and social care systems reveal much about the state of the art in developing long-term care systems. At the same time, these efforts -usually in the form of model projects -are dependent on the existing cultural, professional and social policy traditions in the respective country or even in the respective region only. Our reflections thus have led to the conclusion that there cannot be a 'ranking' of the different models, neither can we provide general 'recipes' for integrating care services. The analysis, however, was able to supply what we have called' elements for successful integration processes' in relation to some key features in long-term care provision that we would like to sum up in the following