The Domiciliary Support Service in Portugal and the change of paradigm in care provision

Context of case: In Portugal, the integration of care services is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, a home support service called SAD (Serviço de Apoio Domiciliário—Domiciliary Support Service), provided by non-profit institutions to the elderly population is believed to be a first approach to integrated care.

Purpose: The aim of this work is to describe and discuss the services provided by the institutions that participate in SAD and understand if this service is the first step in a change towards integrated care.

Data sources: The main data sources were documents provided by institutions like INE (Instituto Nacional de Estatística—National Institute of Statistics) and a questionnaire that was submitted to 75 institutions in order to capture: (a) demographic and structural data; (b) the type of information that the professionals need to fulfil their jobs and (c) the kind of relationship and constraints, if they exist, to better integration, between the institutions that provide SAD and the patients, the social and health systems, and other entities.

Conclusion and discussion: SAD seems to have been promoting a formal collaboration between several entities in the social and health systems. The information shared between these institutions has increased, but where cooperation in care service provision is concerned this seldom surpasses the social bounds because health care is still difficult to integrate.