The relationships between health behavior combinations and medical services utilization of elderly in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Jhih ling Syu, 許芝綾
• Other Authors: Mei ju Chi
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/v5cq99

碩士 === 長榮大學 === 醫務管理學系碩士班 === 98 === Purpose: To understand the relationships between different health behavior combinations and medical services utilization of elderly in Taiwan. Methods: This study adopted the Andersen’s behavioral model of health service utilization and used a secondary data from “Survey of Health and Living Status of the Middle Aged and the Elderly in Taiwan” in 2003 provided by the Bureau of Health Promotion, Department of Health. Elderly over 65 years old were recruited and the number of these samples was 2,751. Data was analyzed by SPSS13.0 software. Chi-square test and logistic regression were used to examine the relationship between health behaviors and medical utilizations. Results: The elders were 38% who had health promotion behavior and preventive health care behavior combinations, 17.8% had all behavior combinations, 16.8% least one preventive health care behavior, 7.9% least one health promotion behavior, 6.5% preventive health care behavior and health risk behavior combinations, 5.5% non any behavior combinations, 4.8% health promotion behavior and preventive health care behavior combinations, and 2.8% least one health risk behavior. When the elders had at least one health risk behavior, they had lower outpatient service use. If elders had preventive behaviors, they tend to have higher emergency rate and hospitalization. However, if elders used to implement health promotion behaviors, they will have lower opportunity to use inpatient services. Conclusions: Elders had preventive health care behaviors always used more medical services utilization. Caring about their health may explain this situation. On the other hand, elderly used more medical services utilization may result from their chronic condition and induce them to do more preventive health care behaviors. It is suggested to use longitudinal analysis to examine the causation in the future.