Older Europeans' experience of unmet health care during the COVID-19 pandemic (first wave).
BMC Health Serv Res
; 22(1): 182, 2022 Feb 12.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1974147
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
During the COVID-19 pandemic the utilization of health services has changed. People were living in a very different social, economic and epidemiological context. Unmet health care is expected to happen. The purposes of this work are i) to compare the differences between unmet care across countries, ii) to find the main factors which are associated with unmet health care, which includes giving up and postponing medical care, as well as denial of medical care provision by the health services, and iii) to determine if health systems' characteristics and government decisions on lockdown were related to unmet care.METHODS:
We have used the most recent dataset collected by the SHARE-COVID Survey during the summer of 2020. These data cover all EU countries and are applied to people over 50. We have estimated a set of logistic regressions to explain unmet health care.RESULTS:
The results indicate that women, people who are slightly younger, with higher education and income, who find it hard to make ends meet each month, and people with poorer health were more likely to experience unmet health care. We also found that in health systems with high out-of-pocket payments people are more likely to give up health care while in countries with previous high levels of unmet health needs this likelihood was the opposite; people in countries with a high number of beds per capita and with a Beveridge-type health system were reporting less postponement of health care.CONCLUSION:
Some policy measures may be suggested such as social and economic measures to mitigate loss of income, expansion of the points and forms of access to health care to improve utilisation.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
COVID-19
Type of study:
Observational study
Limits:
Female
/
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
BMC Health Serv Res
Journal subject:
Health Services Research
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S12913-022-07563-9
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