Resource use by younger versus older patients

Area of Science:

• Geriatric Medicine
• Health Services Research
• Family Medicine

Background:

• The elderly population utilizes a disproportionately high amount of healthcare resources compared to younger individuals.
• It remains unclear if this disparity persists when healthcare is managed by a single medical specialty.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether the elderly consume greater healthcare resources than younger patients when cared for by family practice physicians.
• To compare resource utilization across different age groups within a family practice setting.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of a family practice clinical database at a suburban teaching hospital.
• Inclusion of all acute-care patients managed by a family practice residency service over one year.
• Outcome measures included site of care, hospital length of stay, and consultant use.

Main Results:

• Elderly patients were more likely to be hospitalized than managed in a short-stay unit (p = 0.001).
• The elderly experienced longer hospital stays (mean 8.5 days for ages 80+ vs. 5.1 days for <20 years; p = 0.004).
• Older patients (60+) had a higher mean number of consultants (1.16) compared to younger patients (0.80; p = 0.001).

Conclusions:

• The elderly exhibit greater relative healthcare resource consumption, even when managed by family practice physicians.
• Age may be a surrogate for unexamined factors like insurance status.
• Findings are limited by the single-institution, single-group study design.