Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

High-cost users are a small proportion of the population that accounts for a large amount of healthcare costs. About 60% of them are senior citizens. Evidence suggests that most of these costs are due to hospital admissions which provides the basis for possible health policy interventions. But before such interventions are designed, a better understanding of who new senior HCUs are, what causes the most costly admissions among them and what drives hospitalization for these conditions is needed. Our research has looked into these issues. Findings suggest that only 5 diseases account for 25% of all the hospitalization costs among senior HCUs in the province. We also found that receiving more outpatient care, especially seeing a gerontologist (a specialist in care for seniors) and home care visits, enrollment with a primary care provider, and living at a long-term care facility kept the seniors out of the hospital. These findings show a direction for health policy interventions in the future.