14-Year Trend of Care Use Before Death in Finland.

Luca Dei Bardi , University of Helsinki
Margherita Moretti, University of Helsinki
Laura Cacciani, Department of Epidemiology of the Lazio Region
Kaarina Korhonen, University of Helsinki
Pekka Martikainen, University of Helsinki

The Finnish population aged 65 or older increased by 430,000 people between 2005 and 2018. One of the concerns about population aging is the increase in care demand. Other than age, proximity to death (PTD) and the cause of death are strong predictors of care utilization. To analyze care use in Finland between 2005 and 2018, we examined the number of days spent in health and social care facilities over seven years before death among people who died at age 65 or older. We calculated person-average and population-total number of care days by combinations of sex, age at death, year and cause of death, PTD, and type of care. Between 2005 and 2018, the number of people who died at 65 age or older increased by 28% while their population-total days in care increased by 44%. However, the person-average days by year preceding death remained stable for all combinations of age group and sex. Average care use by cause of death remained stable, with dementia patients being the most intensive users and cancer patients being the least. Underlying this stability, there was a shift from health to social care facilities. We observed an increase in population-total care utilization by older decedents in all years preceding death, reflecting the increase in the number of deaths in this age group. Our preliminary results indicate that the increasing number of decedents at older ages was the main driver of the increasing care use in Finland, independently on the PTD.

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 Presented in Session 1. Health, Wellbeing and Morbidity in Old Age