Dear Members of the European Parliament,
I am writing to urge a fundamental shift in how the European Union approaches home-based long-term care. Evidence accumulated over more than a decade—including recent analyses highlighted in The National Law Review—suggests that up to 40% of scheduled home-care visits fail to take place, rising to 70% in cases of care provider bankruptcy. This is not an isolated issue within France; it reflects a systemic vulnerability across the Union.
As Europe’s population ages and dependency on home-based care increases, continuity of care can no longer be treated as a discretionary social service. It should be recognized and governed as critical infrastructure.
At present, missed home-care visits leave no verifiable trace. Unlike sectors such as aviation, energy, or logistics—where operations are fully timestamped and disruptions trigger predefined contingency protocols—home care systems typically lack:
verifiable event logs
real-time detection of service interruptions
enforceable continuity obligations
redundancy or fallback mechanisms
This absence of traceability renders service failures invisible, and leaves Member States without clear frameworks for accountability—particularly during systemic crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic or large-scale care provider insolvencies.
I respectfully invite you to consider initiating a European directive that establishes continuity of home care as a measurable and enforceable obligation. Such a framework could include:
A mandatory, interoperable system recording care delivery through timestamped check-ins. Missed visits would automatically trigger a Plan B protocol.
Care interruptions should be treated comparably to infrastructure failures, such as power outages, requiring Member States to ensure redundancy and continuity mechanisms.
Just as passengers are compensated for cancelled flights, the EU should define a framework for State liability when care interruptions lead to harm, particularly during systemic crisis.
Moving beyond general “quality guidelines” toward precise, measurable reliability standards applicable to all providers within the Single Market.
This proposal does not seek to add administrative layers, but rather to modernize long-term care governance by aligning it with operational standards already applied to essential infrastructure.
I respectfully request the initiation of a parliamentary hearing on:
“Logistical Reliability and State Liability in Long‑Term Home Care”
Such a hearing would bring together expertise in public health, logistics, digital systems, and fundamental rights to examine how accountability and technology can better safeguard continuity of care across the European Union.
I also write from direct operational experience as founder of YouTime, a platform developed in France over more than a decade to address reliability and continuity challenges in home care delivery. This experience informs the practical feasibility of the framework outlined above.
Thank you for your attention to this matter of growing urgency for millions of European families.
Yours sincerely,
Mr Chi Minh PHAM