Elderly living in institutions and their visits to acute care - Patterns; needs och habits?.

• Background: Every year 1.4 million visits are made to acute care or hospital in Sweden. Elderly makes about one third of these visits and many of them are considered to be unnecessary. Little is known about the patterns of hospitalization and visits to acute care among elderly living in institutions.Objective: The aim of this study is to longitudinally describe patterns of hospitalization and visits to the acute care among elderly living in institutions.Method: SHADES is a longitudinal study including 423 elderly (mean age of 84.8 years, ± 7.27, 71% females) living in institutions in Sweden. Participants were examined every six months during three years. One-hundred thirty individuals participated in all the six in-person testings.Results: At baseline 16 % of the respondents had visited the acute care at least once and around a fourth had been hospitalized the last six months. The most common reasons for visits to acute care were falls and infections. The reasons for hospitalization were mostly complications after falls (n=25) and circulatory diseases (n=24). About one third (n=48) of those who participated at all six IPTs visited the acute care in the hospital at least once during the study and nearly half (n=60) was hospitalized at least once during the study period.Discussion and Conclusion: Hospitalization and visits to acute care are common among persons living in institutions. The next step is to analyze the longitudinal trajectories of visits to the acute care and hospitalization in this group of elderly living in institutions. For the presentation analyzes will also be performed with the aim to examine which factors (e.g. diseases, drugs, function in daily life, social network factors) that relate to visits to the acute care and hospitalization. The results will provide important knowledge that can be used to prevent unnecessary hospitalization in order to provide continuity in the institutional care for the elderly and to save costs.

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