Health services use by older people with disabilities in Spain: Does formal and informal care matter?

ROGERO GARCÍA J.; PRIETO FLORES, M.E.; ROSENBERG, M.W.

Ageing & Society

Cambridge University Press

Año: 2008

0144-686X

As people grow older in late life, their need for help with the activities of dailyliving increases. In Spain, those who need such help constitute about 20 per centof the population aged 65 or more years. Support may be from formal care,informal care or both, and the type has different consequences for care receiversand their social networks. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationshipbetween informal and formal care and the use of health services among olderpeople in Spain. Using a sample of 1,148 respondents aged 65 or more years fromthe Spanish National Health Survey of 2003, we analysed the association betweenthe sources of care (formal, informal, both, or no care) and the frequency of threetypes of health-care utilisation: hospitalisation, emergency services and medicalconsultations. After controlling for sex, age, level of difficulty in the activities ofdaily living, self-perceived health status, and social class, it was found that olderpeople with disabilities who received neither informal nor formal care were morelikely to consult physicians than those who received informal care, but that therewere no significant relationships between the type of care and health-servicesutilisation. The findings provide new information about the consequences of thedifferent types of care of older people with disabilities, and suggest specifically thatinformal care substitutes for some tasks usually done by health professionals.