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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Factors related to frequent usage of the primary healthcare services in old age
— findings from the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care | | Author(s) | Mikael Rennemark, Göran Holst, Cecilia Fagerstrom |
| Journal title | Health and Social Care in the Community, vol 17, no 3, May 2009 |
| Pages | pp 304-311 |
| Source | http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/hsc |
| Keywords | General practice ; Usage [services] ; Frequent ; Cross sectional surveys ; Sweden. |
| Annotation | People aged 60+ are the most frequent users of healthcare services. In this age range, however, both frequent and infrequent users can be found. Previous research has found that the frequency of of service use may be influenced by psychological and social factors as well as illness. This study investigated the degree to which such factors add to the explanation of differences to number of visits to a physician. A cross-sectional study was conducted with a random sample of 1017 individuals aged 60 to 78 from the Blekinge part of the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care database. The data were collected during 2001 to 2003. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses were used with frequent (three visits or more during a year) and infrequent use as dichotomous dependent variable. The final statistical analysis included 643 individuals (63% of the sample). Independent variables were sense of coherence (SOC), internal locus of control, education level and social anchorage. Controlled variables were age, gender, functional ability and comorbidity. The results showed that comorbidity was most strongly related to frequent use. In addition, SOC and internal locus of control had small, but significant effects on the odds of being a frequent user. The lower the SOC and the internal locus of control were, the higher were the odds of frequent use. Education levels and social anchorage were unrelated to frequency of use. The results indicate that frequent healthcare services users are more ill than infrequent users; Psychological factors influence use only marginally, and social factors as well as age and gender are not by themselves reason for frequent healthcare service use. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-091019003 A |
| Classmark | L5: QLD: 4HA: 3KB: 76P |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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