Predicting the volume of health and social services: integrating cognitive impairment into the modified Andersen framework

Abstract

This investigation examined cognitive impairment as a predictor of the volume of community services used by older adults. Predictors of service volume were selected according to the modified Andersen framework and tested with 97 health care and 246 social service clients of a large multiservice agency. Results for health care clients showed that the effects of four predictors differ depending on clients' level of cognitive impairment; living arrangement, presence of secondary caregivers, client depression and task burden of the primary caregiver. No differences in predictor of social service use were observed for cognitively impaired and lucid clients.