ABSTRACT

The elderly long-term care insurance in Korea will be enacted in2008. It is expected to extend both institutional and home carebenefits which are currently limited to public assistance to poorindividuals. Since it is a government-led public insurance, olderindividuals in functional limitations will benefit regardless of theirsocioeconomic status. The reasons for introducing the long-termcare insurance are the rapidly growing older population, higherusage of health insurance among elders, lack of caregiving familymembers due to low-fertility rates, elder abuse reports, higherlevels of female labor participation, and expensive nursing homeadmission rates for both low and middle income families. The roleof care management will be in great importance since the longtermcare system is an integration of medicine, public health, andsocial welfare. Thus, the concept, emergence and communicationskills for care managers are discussed in this paper. This paperalso points the importance of developing a fully adopted Koreanversion of assessment tool.