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demands throughout the total care process. By addressing the research question ‘How
does personalization contribute to the provision of customized modular long-term care?’
the chapter examines how the overall care package offered is adapted to the demands and
preferences of individual clients. A review of the literature showed that customization
of care supply can be achieved by means of modularity. Here, the focus is mainly on the
effectuation of appropriate combinations of care and service components with respect
to the technical contents of care. However, starting from the fact that care services are
rather different from other services, literature also acknowledges that besides building on
modular platforms and architectures, modular care provision is also about making the
face-to-face interaction responsive to client needs and values. This drove us to investigate
the contribution of personalization, being the adaptation of interpersonal interactions,
in tuning customized modular care packages offered to client demand. Based on our
empirical data we identified several forms of modularity that helped in the creation of
customized care packages. In addition, and in line with existing literature, our empirical
research suggested that package customization by means of modularity was not enough
to provide care that is considered as truly demand-based. Personalization, even though
largely practiced in a subconscious manner by many professionals, complemented
customization in the sense that it focused on the adaptation of interpersonal interaction,
whereas customization was concerned with the adaptation and fine-tuning of the care
package contents. In addition, personalization played a role in effectuating possibilities
for customization over time, which would assist providers of care for the elderly to
continuously provide an up-to-date configuration of care and service components to
each elderly client. Based on our findings we would recommend care organizations to
be receptive to the interplay between customization and personalization and provide
their professionals with means to effectuate both.
Whereas Chapters 5 to 7 largely took an operations management viewpoint on
modularity in long-term care for the elderly,
Chapter 8
aims to present and reflect on
the findings of this study from a health services research point-of-view. To this end, we
address the following research questions: ‘What modularity practices are currently used
in long-term care provision in order to provide demand-based care? In addition, what
gaps remain and how can these be resolved by means of modularity practices?’ Starting
from the basic aspects and practices of modularity, we explored empirically the use and
application of modularity principles in the current working practices and processes of
the four case organizations. Moreover, we related modularity to the four dimensions
of demand-based care, as characterized in Chapter 2. Our findings revealed that a
modular set-up of supply and the use of modular prototype packages were employed to
arrange care and service supply transparently and assist providers of long-term care in
providing their clients with options and variation. Moreover, modularization of activities
taking place in the specification process allowed the case organizations to manage
Modular
Care Provision