Health status and healthcare service needs for the rural elderly population in Northern Jiangsu / 中华老年医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To study the health status ,the current health service needs and the influencing factors concerning the rural elderly population in Northern Jiangsu. Methods Multi-stage stratified cluster sampling was conducted in elderly people over 60 in Xuzhou ,Lianyungang ,and Suqian.Participants were face-to-face interviewed with questionnaires.Information on health status and health service needs was collected and analyzed. Results A total of 2655 elderly people were enrolled in this study ,including 1252 males (47.2%)and 1403 (52.8%)females with a mean age of (70.9 ± 6.7)years.Self-assessed health was generally poor ,with the two-week morbidity at 26.6%and the prevalence of chronic diseases at 60.1%;46.5% of the participants regularly took medications ;4.1% of them had physical disability ;8.2% had impaired daily activities ;The two-week hospital visit rate was 29.4%;The one-year hospitalization rate was 18.5%;The rate of non-hospitalization for people in need of hospitalization was 27.6%.Multivariate analysis showed that old age(OR＝5.51) ,adequate income(OR＝2.29)and short journey to a medical institution (OR＝7.90) were associated with high two-week hospital visit rates ;old age(OR ＝ 1.76) ,female gender(OR ＝1.36) ,empty-nest(OR＝ 1.37 ) ,family harmony (OR＝ 1.91 ) ,having chronic diseases (OR＝ 3.49 ) , and high frequency in taking medications (OR＝1.69)were correlated with high hospitalization rates. Conclusions The elderly population in rural areas of Northern Jiangsu shows poor health ,has high needs for health services ,and lacks sufficient service utilization.