AGE AND GENDER DIFFERENCES IN HEALTH-SERVICES UTILIZATION

The purpose of this study was to examine the health service utilizatio n patterns of elderly male and female enrollees of a large urban staff model Health Maintenance Organization (HMO). This HMO offered a wide spectrum of managed care services for its beneficiaries. A cross-secti onal design was employed, The 759 randomly sampled elderly enrollees r anged in age from 66 to 99, with an average of 77.15 years. Approximat ely 60% were male and 40% were female; thus, the sample was not repres entative of the national older adult population. Three utilization pat terns indicated that there were (a) nonsignificant relationships betwe en age or gender and urgent care visits, prescribed pharmaceuticals, a nd out-of-pocket costs for pharmaceuticals; (b) linear relationships b etween age and gender and visits to HMO primary care providers (-), ho me-health care visits (+), emergency care visits (+), hospitalizations (+), and MD visits during hospitalizations (+); and (c) age was curvi linearly related to use of both HMO specialists and non-HMO specialist s, These findings suggest that use of acute care services, including h ospitalizations, inpatient physician visits, and emergency services in crease with age but the use of primary care providers decreases with a ge. Gender was not a significant modifier of the relationship between age and utilization. (C) 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.