Abstract
Objectives: To analyze the challenges and dimensions of long-term care (LTC) infrastructure in Iran’s health system.
Design: Exploratory qualitative content analysis.
Setting(s): Iran’s health system.
Participants: Individuals with a minimum of five years of experience in geriatric care, LTC, and health systems, as well as at least a master’s degree in health system management.
Outcome Measures: The data on challenges and dimensions related to the LTC infrastructure in Iran’s health system were gathered through 15 semi-structured interviews.
Results: The challenges of LTC infrastructure in the health system of Iran were divided into two main themes (physical and human resources) and four sub-themes (lack of skilled and trained human resources, lack of attention to older adults in the training of specialists, the inappropriateness of LTC facilities, and weakness of LTC infrastructure). In addition, the planning and development of human resources, use of human resources, and development of specialized facilities and community-based care were identified as the sub-themes of the components.
Conclusions: The training of specialized human resources, the updating of medical science curricula according to demographic changes, and the formation of multidisciplinary specialized teams to assess care needs and provide services are among the most important measures to provide human resource infrastructure. Moreover, designing LTC facilities at different levels and using the capacity of primary healthcare centers are among the most important measures to provide physical infrastructure that should be prioritized.