A PROFILE OF HEALTH-CARE UTILIZATION OF THE DISABLED POPULATION IN MANITOBA

OBJECTIVES. This study profiled health care utilization by disabled an d nondisabled individuals in the Canadian province of Manitoba to eval uate the association between health care utilization and disability. M ETHODS. Age-standardized annualized utilization rates were calculated according to sex using longitudinal data on individual encounters with the Manitoba health care system from 1983 to 1990. Associations betwe en severity of disability, number of prior chronic conditions, and pro spective utilization were examined using multivariate regressions. RES ULTS. Utilization patterns of the mildly disabled and the nondisabled differed only slightly. Severely disabled individuals had much higher rates of contact and consumed more resources, even after controlling f or chronic conditions. The severely disabled accounted for 3% of the p opulation and consumed 16% of hospital days and 7% of physician costs annually. CONCLUSIONS. The findings emphasize the importance of incorp orating measures of disability in health services research. Both the s everity of disability and the number of chronic conditions had indepen dent value in predicting health fare utilization. This has important i mplications for data collection and for the allocation of health care resources for research, which has traditionally been targeted toward f atal chronic conditions.