Disability and health service utilization among old Koreans

Abstract

This study compared persons with disabilities with those without disabilities in terms of health services utilization and examined the factors associated with the use of inpatient hospital services. Data on a sample of 4040 older adults (65+ years of age) from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing were used. Descriptive and logistic regression analysis was performed examining sample characteristics of participants with and without disabilities and factors significantly associated with health services utilization. This study showed that the elderly with disabilities used significantly more inpatient hospital services than the elderly without disabilities. As expected, poor health was clearly the most influential factor explaining the use of inpatient hospital services. The second most influential factor in determining use of medical services is disability. Persons with disabilities had a twofold or more increase in the odds of using inpatient hospital services. Likewise, the person with chronic condition had also an additional twofold increase in risk for medical services due to the chronic condition. Chronic conditions were clearly the third influential factor explaining the use of inpatient hospital services. Finally, females were a small margin more likely to use inpatient hospital services than males.