Transparency in nursing home services: a legal requirement and an issue of concern before and during COVID-19 in Spain?

Abstract

The objective of the article is to analyze transparency in the provision of nursing home services towards beneficiaries. To do this, we identify three policy dimensions and their specific elements, what allow us to assess transparency in the implementation of these services. The article develops and empirically tests an analytical framework to assess the transparency of elderly care services in Spain. On the one hand, we examine the extent to which nursing home service providers (both public and private) are obliged to supply infor-mation about their performance. We analyze the formal obligations for both public and private facilities in the seventeen autonomous communities (ACs). On the other hand, we examine the content of the messages posted on Twitter by the three biggest business associ-ations of the sector in Spain, namely, Business Federation of Assistance for Dependents (Federación Empresarial de la Dependencia), Association of Dependency Services Compa-nies (Asociación de Empresas de Servicios para la Dependencia), and Business Circle of Caring for People (Círculo Empresarial de Atención a las Personas), in order to determine whether transparency is a concern for the industry regardless of the regulatory requirements faced by direct service providers.