Background: Healthcare needs and service use increase with frailty. Frailty is closely linked with cognitive impairment, but not all those who are cognitively impaired are frail. It is not well understood how the combination of frailty and cognitive impairment are related to patterns of illness, service use and cost of care. Aim: We will use data from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) to examine:
The prevalence of physical and cognitive frailty and incident risk of severe cognitive impairment
The drivers of patterns and costs of care
Variation in caregiver type and intensity of informal care provided
Methods: We aim to use data from wave 1 to wave 5 of the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). Respondent’s socio-economic data, health data (frailty, chronic illness, disability, falls, and measures of cognition) and healthcare utilisation (primary, secondary, long term care, medication, informal care) will be used.
In the context of future pressures on public budgets from population ageing, examining the determinants of healthcare utilisation and costs with frailty and cognitive impairment can assist policymakers in designing appropriate interventions (e.g., increasing use of primary prevention) to control expenditure, improve population health and better project the effects of demographic and socioeconomic change on healthcare needs and use.
