1995 Volume 2 Pages 47-54
Medical care for the elderly is quite diversified and a lot of attention has been paid recently to elderly inpatients caused by non-meical reasons，or so-called “hospitalized for social reasons”. We tried to estimate the magnitude of these patients in terms of the number and medical expenditures by using the micro data obtained by the Research Project on Medical Expenditures of the Elderly. Those inpatients whose annual average per diem inpatient dxpenditure was less than certain amount were defined as hospitalized for social reasons. Such amousts were calculated locally by average per diem expenditure of long-term inpatients. About 3 to 6.5 percent of the population aged 70 or over was estimated as hospitalized for social reasons. Taking an intermediate case for example，about 4 percent of elderly population，on 19 percent of elderly inpatients，were hospitalized for social reasons and they consumed about 14 percent of total medical expenditures of the elderly. The proportion of hospitalized for social reasons to the population increased with age，was higher for females than males within the same age group，and increased sharply with length of stay. If we assume that there were no such hospitalization，the ratio of inpatient to outpatient in per capita medical expenditures of the elderly population changed from 1.14 versus 1.0 to 0.87 versus 1.0，shifting to larger outpatient expendioures. Although it is not easy to determine the quantity of hospitalized for social reasons quite objectively，the method proposed here was considered to be better than such method as to measure them solely through length of stay in hospitals.
