The causal effects of home health care use on mortality and health care expenditures following hospital discharge: The case of Latvia

The pressures of ageing populations stimulate policy-makers to look for cost-effective opportunities that would go in hand with greater efficiency, quality and better outcomes. In this study, we analyze the efficiency of home health care services in reducing mortality, readmissions, and total health care costs during 365 days after the hospital discharge among the Latvian elderly patients aged 60 and above. This is the first comprehensive study on utility of home health care in the post-transition context. The individual-level data used in this study have been collected from various Latvian administrative data sources, including registers of the National Health Service, the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Oncology Register, Psychiatry Register, etc. The obtained data set contains rich information on all the elderly patients who have been hospitalized at least once during the observation period from 2014 to 2018. In our study, we verify three broad hypotheses: home health care reduces the probability of death, hospital readmission, and contains healthcare costs among the discharged patients. These hypotheses are tested within the entire group of elderly patients, as well in specific subgroups, including oncology patients, patients with cardiovascular diseases, etc.

Author(s): Irina Mozhaeva

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