HOSPITAL UTILIZATION PROFILES AMONG OLDER ADULTS OVER TIME - CONSISTENCY AND VOLUME AMONG SURVIVORS AND DECEDENTS

Medicare claims data are used to model hospital utilization patterns f or the 4,660 survivors and 2,867 decedents of the Longitudinal Study o n Aging (LSOA). When the volume of hospital utilization was collapsed into four categories based on the mean annual number of hospital episo des and consistency was defined as a maximum absolute deviation from t hat mean of 1.5 or less, 42.6 percent of the LSOA respondents were fou nd not to have any hospital admissions, and another 24.7 percent were found to be consistently low users. Only 4.8 percent were consistently high users, with an additional 6.8 percent being inconsistently high users. Multiple regression identified prior physician and hospital uti lization, as well as poor perceived health, as the most important pred ictors of the volume and consistency of hospital utilization among sur vivors, as well as of the volume of hospital utilization among deceden ts. Among decedents, consistency was primarily related to geographic r egion and prior physician utilization.