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This study explores the joint clientships of social welfare and health care services in Kotka and assesses the quality of services provided to older home care clients against the national quality guidelines. On the basis of existing information systems the service needs of older clients both in Kotka and elsewhere in the country seem to derive both from declining functional capacity and straightforward health problems, even though the latter are excluded from the national quality guidelines. Strict ideological or administrative boundary lines between such areas as primary health care, outpatient and institutional care and specialised health care therefore very much complicate the task of modelling and implementing customer-oriented service chains. This may give rise to unnecessary costs, problems with the quality of care and deteriorating quality of life in the absence of coherent service structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]