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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| The impact of self-rated health on medical care utilization for older people with depressive symptoms | | Author(s) | Christy Pu, Ya-Mei Bai, Yiing-Jenq Chou |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 28, no 5, May 2013 |
| Publisher | Wiley Blackwell, May 2013 |
| Pages | pp 479-486 |
| Source | www.orangejournal.org |
| Keywords | Depression ; Symptoms ; Health [elderly] ; Medical care ; Out-patients ; Usage [services] ; Taiwan. |
| Annotation | This study aimed to test the hypothesis whether self-rated health alone can explain the relationship between depression and medical care utilisation for older people and to determine whether the explanatory power of self-rated health is greater than that of the explanatory power of a major disease and activities of daily living. The study used data from 1,572 older people obtained from the 2005 National Health Interview Survey in Taiwan. The data from the National Health Interview Survey were linked to the 2005 computerised claims data from the National Health Insurance, and from that, the outpatient expenditures and number of outpatient episodes were identified. The contribution of self-rated health, activities of daily living, the presence of major diseases, and self-rated health were estimated using ordinary least squares regressions. Results showed that controlling for self-rated health alone almost eliminates the positive relationship between depressive symptoms and number of outpatient visits. After controlling for self-rated health, the utilisation ratio of outpatient visits for older people with depressive symptoms reduced significantly to only 1.01 and became insignificant. A similar pattern was observed for total outpatient costs. Overall it was found that self-rated health is an important factor in the depressive symptoms_outpatient utilisation relationship. To reduce medical costs for older people with depressive symptoms, it is essential that the self-rated health for this group is improved. Future studies should test the mechanism through which self-rated health impacts on medical utilisation for older people with depressive symptoms. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-130419204 A |
| Classmark | ENR: CT: CC: LK: LFB: QLD: 7DP |
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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