Factors Of The Elderly Health Care Utilization

This study, use the Shanghai Jingan district elderly health and pension demand survey data, describes the utilization of medical services in the elderly, explore the possible factors that affect the utilization of medical services.Using the Anderson model as an analytical framework, analyze the factors affecting the elderly health care utilization. From the "Predisposing factors","Enabling factors" and "Need factors" three angles, make a Tobit regression analysis for potential influencing factors. There are two kinds of medical care utilization measurement scale, medical expenses and clinic visits, enabled us to get the two different kinds of influence factors. In addition, due to differences in treatment agencies, the medical services are divided into two levels as "Non-primary care services level"&"Primary care services level",through the tobit regression analysis,we also obtained the influencing factors.The results showed, the costs of medical expenditure is mainly influenced by age, gender, basic insurance categories, social support, self-evaluation of health, disease, and the degree of depression. Clinic visits mainly influenced by gender, education level, number of people sharing, basic insurance categories, self-evaluation of health, serious disease. Non-primary care services level is mainly influenced by age, basic insurance categories, the degree of disorder of daily living, self-rated health, illness, and the degree of depression.Primary care services level is mainly influenced by gender, number of people sharing, the use of social support, basic medical insurance category, the degree of disorder of daily living.Most of these factors which have been validated in previous studies, but social support, number of people sharing and the degree of elder’s depression has been paid less attention, however, in this article, their importance is repeatedly verified.The higher the degree of social support, the elderly medical expense is lower, the more clinic visits. Those elder who has more roommate will get more clinic visits. Elder with higher GDS score spend more money on health care, but has fewer clinic visits in primary care services level.Based on analysis of factors, in order to improve the health of the elderly, we should pay attention to make up for the social support of the elderly, improve primary health care services, and enhance the convenience of the service.