Fig. 1

Schema of care level reclassification in the 2006 reform of the long-term care insurance in Japan. Notes: LTCI: long-term care insurance. Care levels consisted of “support required level (SL),” “care required level (CL) 1,” “CL2,” “CL3,” “CL4,” and “CL5” (in increasing order of severity) before the LTCI reform. After the reform, SL recipients were renamed SL1, and CL2–CL5 recipients stayed in the same category. CL1 recipients were re-categorized into a new category (SL2) if they were relatively healthy, but remained in CL1 otherwise