Disability level and use of long-term care services in Norway: a nation-wide registry study

In Norway, disability level is an important criterion when deciding the type and level of long-term care services. Each care recipient can be scored on 20 different disability level measures. Our aims were to investigate completeness in disability level information in the Norwegian Registry of Primary Health Care (NRPHC), to group disability level measures into meaningful groups, and to study the relationship between grouped disability scores and the type of services received.

We retrieved information on type of care and disability level from the NRPHC on individuals who received long-term care services in 2022. Type of care was divided into hierarchical and mutually exclusive groups, with long-term institutional care as the most complex service group. We used principal components analysis to summarise and visualise the information in the 20 different disability level measures, and to create grouped scores.

A total of 386,697 persons aged 0-104 years were registered as recipients of long-term care services in Norway on 31 December 2022. Information on disability measures were of high completeness (72.4 % of the population were registered with all 20 measures) but was lower for younger age groups in which the number of recipients was lower. Principal components analyses identified two groups of measures, which we termed physical and cognitive functioning. Physical and cognitive functioning were poorest for individuals receiving the most complex and extensive services.

NRPHC disability data are reasonably complete, the 20 measures readily fall into two distinct categories, and seem to reflect real life differences in disability.