Usefulness of Administrative Data in Assessing the Service Quality and Technical Efficiency of Social Care Centres

Abstract

Latvia, like other countries worldwide, faces the challenges of an ageing society, with an increasing proportion of elderly population group and the demand for long-term social care services at local level. The Latvian Social Protection and Labour Market Policy Guidelines for 2021–2027 include actions on the improvement of the quality monitoring and efficiency assessment system of social services. In this article, the authors evaluate the quality of 67 social care centres (SCC) in the period from 2011 to 2017, and technical efficiency (TE) of 64 SCCs in 2017 by using publicly available administrative data of SCCs. The aim of the work is to find out whether administrative data can be used in the evaluation of the quality of care at SCC and TE of SCC. The authors conclude that the analysis of administrative data does not allow one to determine the quality of SCC because administrative data do not contain predictors of the care process. The administrative data of SCC can be used in the evaluation of TE of SCC, where, depending on the applied method, set goals, and objectives, the obtained results can be used to determine the effectiveness of local government SCCs and to improve economic activity. Based on the content of the work, the authors point out the need to introduce unified quality indicators (QI) of the care process at SCCs of Latvia. This would ensure opportunities for control of the quality of care at SCCs, transparency of the care process, and quality assessment. In addition, QI can be used as a component in evaluating the efficiency of SCCs. The authors acknowledge that further research related to the assessment of SCC quality and efficiency in Latvia is needed.