Health care utilization and costs in the years preceding dementia identification.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

There is evidence that health care utilization increases after incident dementia, particularly after dementia diagnosis and toward the end of life; however, less is known about utilization in the years before dementia identification.

Methods

In this retrospective cohort study we obtained data on n = 5547 beneficiaries from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS)-Medicare linked sample (n = 1241 with and n = 4306 without dementia) to compare longitudinal trends in health care costs and utilization in the 6 years preceding dementia identification relative to a confounder-balanced reference group without dementia.

Results

We found that persons with dementia had a greater prevalence of outpatient emergency department (ED), inpatient hospital, skilled nursing, a

SUBMITTER: Kumar RG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10843256 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature