Purely ambulatory home care services accounted for around 15 percent of the enterprises, while 6 percent were user-controlled personal assistance (BPA) or individual measures. For BPA and individual measures, this is far more than Statistics Norway (SSB) has previously observed. The remaining 10–15 percent of the enterprises were combinations of several types of services.
Three out of four home care service enterprises were aimed at specific target groups. Nearly half concerned intellectual disabilities, etc., while one quarter of the enterprises were evenly distributed between the target groups elderly/dementia and persons with mental disorders/substance abuse problems. The smallest municipalities had a lower degree of specialization, both in terms of type of service and target groups.
The co-located dwellings or community dwellings with an associated staff base, which are the most frequent type of enterprise in home care services, usually had seven to eight housing units or places per provider. In total, the staffed residential services represented around 30,300 housing units. The exception was housing bases for the elderly and/or persons with dementia, which typically had around 20 housing units. Slightly more than one third of the housing units concerned intellectual disabilities, etc., around one quarter concerned elderly/dementia, while just over ten percent were aimed at persons with mental disorders and/or substance abuse problems. The ambulatory services are to a lesser extent aimed at specific target groups than the housing bases, particularly in the smallest municipalities.
Home care service enterprises are predominantly municipally operated. Privately operated enterprises accounted for nine percent. However, the share of private enterprises is high within user-controlled personal assistance and individual measures, at 76 and 55 percent of enterprises, respectively. The share of private enterprises among those offering ambulatory practical assistance is also fairly high, at around one quarter. More than 100 enterprises, or seven percent of the purely housing-based services, are privately operated.
The mapping constitutes an important data basis for shedding light on the content of home care services, which in 2024 amounted to NOK 94 billion in municipal expenditures. At the same time, the mapping can be used to quality-assure other data sources, such as the Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities (CCR), SSB’s employment register, KOSTRA accounting functions, and user data from the Norwegian Registry for Primary Health Care (NRPHC). The mapping also entails new analytical opportunities through the linkage of these data sources. At the same time, the report points to challenges and solutions for detailed analyses related to enterprises with multiple types of services or target groups.