Food Insecurity and Health Care Utilization Among Older Adults.

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between food insecurity and health care utilization (physician, inpatient, emergency room, and home health visits) among older adults. Survey data collected from Georgia Advanced Performance Outcomes Measures Project 6 linked to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (GA Advanced POMP6-CMS) data 2008 ( N = 957) were analyzed. Nearly one half of the sample (48.3%) was food insecure. Food insecure individuals were significantly less likely than food secure individuals to have any physician (69.7% vs. 80.2%) and home health visits (24.9% vs. 32.3%) during 2008. However, there were no significant differences in levels of health care utilization by food secure and food insecure older adults. Food secure and food insecure older adults utilized comparable levels of health care services. Public assistance programs such as Medicare and meal services targeted toward older adults may enable economically constrained, food insecure older adults to access needed health care services.