Jenni N. Ikonen, Johan G. Eriksson, Minna K. Background: The association between frailty and specialized healthcare utilization is not well studied. We, therefore, examined the utilization of specialized healthcare services among frail Finnish older adults. Methods: A sub-sample of participants of the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study were followed prospectively for specialized healthcare utilization from nationwide registers between the years and A negative binomial regression model was used to examine the association between frailty and the total number of visits, emergency visits, outpatient appointments separating the first outpatient appointments and the follow-up appointments, inpatient care including elective and non-elective hospital admissions and the total number of hospital days.
We also calculated average length of stay ALOS and used the KruskalβWallis test to examine the differences between the groups. Results: After adjusting for covariates, frailty was significantly associated with the number of specialized healthcare visits IRR 1. Frailty was particularly strongly associated with the number of hospital days IRR 5. Conclusions: Frailty increases the use of most specialized healthcare services.
Preventative interventions against frailty are needed to decrease the burden on specialized healthcare systems. JavaScript is disabled for your browser.
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