OBJECTIVES: Korea became an aged society in 2018 and is predicted to become a super-aged society by 2026. Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) is implementing a support program to improve the quality of long-term care hospitals to ensure the quality and adequacy of medical services for the elderly. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the quality improvement support program implemented by the MOHW for long-term care hospitals on the nursing outcomes of inpatients.

METHODS: This secondary data analysis study utilized the adequacy evaluation data of long-term care hospitals in 2015 and 2018, and reported data on the current status of long-term care institutions in 2015 from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA). The subjects of the analysis were 823 long-term care hospitals that received adequacy evaluations of inpatient benefits in both 2015 and 2018. The intervention group comprised 194 long-term care hospitals that received a low grade in the 2015 evaluation and participated in the quality improvement support program from May 30 to August 31, 2017. The non-intervention group comprised 629 long-term care hospitals that received a high grade in the 2015 evaluation and did not participate in the quality improvement support program. The effect of the quality improvement support program on the nursing outcomes was analyzed with the difference-in-difference (DID) method using the STATA 15.0 program.

RESULTS: As a result of DID analysis of the effect of the quality improvement support program on nursing outcomes, all nursing outcomes showed statistically significant improvement.

CONCLUSIONS: To improve the quality of care in long-term care hospitals, the implementation of various quality improvement support programs for long-term care hospitals and the monitoring of nursing outcomes are necessary, and measures to efficiently utilize medical resources should be continuously pursued in this era of the growing elderly population.