Health care service use in the Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability (FINGER) during an extended follow‐up period

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundFinnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability (FINGER) is a randomized trial aiming to prevent cognitive decline with a 2‐year multidomain lifestyle intervention. Beneficial effects were detected not only in cognition, but also for co‐morbidity, as reported earlier. Aim of this work was to investigate, if the multidomain intervention also had an impact on the health care use and to evaluate possible cost‐effectiveness of the interventions in terms of health care costs.MethodThe FINGER trial recruited a population‐based cohort of 1259 at‐risk individuals aged 60‐77 living in six areas of Finland. They were randomized into a multidomain lifestyle intervention consisting of diet, exercise, cognitive training and vascular risk management (n = 631) or a regular health advice (control) (n = 628) group for two years and followed on average for 8 years. Health care use was obtained from nationwide registers where all primary and specialized care visits are recorded. We calculated days spent in hospital, ambulatory visits, outpatient visits in hospitals and primary care, and home care. Costs will be evaluated based on national reference prices.ResultAltogether 99% of the population used some health care services and 66% were hospitalized at least for one day during the 8 years. 128 (10%) participants died during the follow‐up. Preliminary data indicated that the intervention group spent less days in the hospital, but there were no differences in outpatient visits. Further analyses are ongoing to evaluate the costs related to these visits.ConclusionMultidomain lifestyle intervention which is effective in prevention of cognitive decline can also help in reducing health care use at least in terms of hospital stays.