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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Cost of health care for a community of older adults in an urban academic healthcare system | | Author(s) | Christopher M Callahan, Timothy E Stump, Kevin T Stroupe |
| Journal title | Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, vol 46, no 11, November 1998 |
| Pages | pp 1371-1377 |
| Keywords | General practice ; Hospital services ; Costs [care] ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Urban academic medical centres provide care for large populations of vulnerable older people in the United States (US). The aim of this study was to describe the distribution and content of total healthcare costs accrued over a 4-year period by older patients cared for in such a centre and to describe high-cost patients and utilisation patterns. A total of 12,581 patients aged 60 years and over participated in the study. The mean number of visits to ambulatory community centres were 4.3 per year, and 38.1% of patients had been hospitalised one or more times. Within the four-year period, 24.1% of patients had missed five or more appointments with their primary care physicians, 32.7% of patients had five or more unscheduled clinic visits, and 12.5% had five or more emergency room visits. Total health care costs for 4 years for this cohort was $125.2 million. Expenditures associated with hospitalisations accounted for 63.6% of health care costs. Total inpatient and outpatient costs for the 38% of patients hospitalised at least once accounted for 85.3% of all health care expenditures. Recorded smoking history, obesity, and low serum albumin were significantly associated with excess costs. (AKM). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990302401 A |
| Classmark | L5: LD: QDC: 7T |
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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