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Healthcare and aging: do European Union countries differ?

Mindaugas Stankunas (Department of Health Management, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania)
Mark Avery (Health Service Management Department, Centre for Health Innovation, School of Medicine, Griffith University, Southport, Australia)
Jutta Lindert (Department of Public Health and Social Work, University of Applied Sciences Emden, Emden, Germany and Brandeis Women’s Research Center, Brandeis University, Waltham, USA)
Ian Edwards (Health Service Management Department, Centre for Health Innovation, School of Medicine, Griffith University, Southport, Australia)
Mirko Di Rosa (Scientific Direction, Center for Socio-Economic Research on Ageing, Italian National Institute of Health and Science on Aging, Ancona, Italy)
Francisco Torres-Gonzalez (Centro de Investigacion Biomedica en Red de Salud Mental, Department of Psychiatry, University of Granada, Granada, Spain)
Elisabeth Ioannidi-Kapolou (Department of Sociology, National School of Public Health, Athens, Greece)
Henrique Barros (Department of Epidemiology, Institute of Public Health, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal)
Joaquim Soares (Department of Health Sciences, Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden)

International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance

ISSN: 0952-6862

Article publication date: 10 October 2016

642

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate socio-economic inequalities in the use, accessibility and satisfaction with health services amongst 60-84 year old people from seven European urban communities.

Design/methodology/approach

Data for this study were collected in 2009. The target population was people aged 60-84 years from Stuttgart (Germany), Athens (Greece), Ancona (Italy), Kaunas (Lithuania), Porto (Portugal), Granada (Spain) and Stockholm (Sweden). The total sample comprised 4,467 respondents with a mean response rate across these countries of 45.2 per cent.

Findings

The study demonstrated that the majority of respondents had contact with a health care provider within the last 12 months. The highest percentages were reported by respondents from Spain (97.8 per cent) and Portugal (97.7 per cent). The results suggest that 13.0 per cent of respondents had refrained from seeking care services. The highest rates were amongst seniors from Lithuania (24.0 per cent), Germany (16.2 per cent) and Portugal (15.4 per cent). Logistic regression suggests that seniors who refrained from seeking health care was statistically significant associated with those with higher levels of education (odds ratios (OR)=1.21; 95 per cent confidence intervals (CI)=1.01-1.25) and financial strain (OR=1.26; 95 per cent CI=1.16-1.37). Furthermore, the majority of respondents were satisfied with health care services.

Originality/value

The findings from the “Elder Abuse: a multinational prevalence survey” study indicate the existence of significant variations in use, accessibility and satisfaction with health services by country and for socio-economic factors related to organizing and financing of care systems.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The Elder Abuse: a multinational prevalence survey (ABUEL) was supported by the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers (EAHC) (Grant No. A/2007123) and conducted with the help of ABUEL groups in each participating country.

Citation

Stankunas, M., Avery, M., Lindert, J., Edwards, I., Rosa, M.D., Torres-Gonzalez, F., Ioannidi-Kapolou, E., Barros, H. and Soares, J. (2016), "Healthcare and aging: do European Union countries differ?", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 29 No. 8, pp. 895-906. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJHCQA-09-2015-0110

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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