An economic appraisal of two strategies in geriatric screening

Screening for preventive geriatric health-care has become common in many Norwegian municipalities. Different methods are used to screen for unreported need of intervention. There is little information available about which is the most costeffective method. This article describes a comparison of two screening models. The first screening was conducted by means of a personal interview held at a health clinic and the second by a postal questionnaire. The results show that a postal questionnaire study was more cost-effective than the health-clinic consultation. It demanded no more resources than the health-clinic model, but had a wider effect because it covered a broader spectrum with regard to response, proportion of the total population and the proportion of respondents for whom an intervention was implemented.