General and Substantive Accountability in Nursing Home Services: Assessing Messages from the Demand Side and the Supply Side

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the extent to which general and substantive accountability is integrated into the language used by key actors involved in nursing home services. Particularly, we investigate the messages used by the supply side, which includes public and private organizations involved in residential care for older adults, and the demand side, which comprises organizations representing service beneficiaries. Moreover, we explore the alignment between the messages used by both sides of the accountability relationship. In the context of Spanish nursing homes, we analyzed a corpus of tweets by organizations from both sides of the accountability relationship, from one year before the outbreak of COVID-19 restrictions to after their implementation. Using text analysis techniques, we found that messages related to general and substantive accountability had a low priority before and after the outbreak. Public organizations were slightly more likely to employ general accountability terms than private organizations. This is particularly in non-crisis situations, although less frequently than organizations representing beneficiaries. Our analysis demonstrates a lack of convergence between the messaging on the supply and demand sides, indicating a communication breakdown between the two sides in the accountability relationship.