Alcohol use among older adults and health care utilization

Abstract

Objective

Examinations of the association between health care utilization and levels of alcohol use are lacking in nationally representative samples of older adults. The present study set out to fill this gap by demonstrating how various aspects of health care utilization are associated with alcohol use among older adults in the United States.

Method

Cross-sectional panel data from 11 years of the National Health and Interview Survey were used to examine prevalence and rates of alcohol use among older adults (n = 106,511) and associations with demographic variables and recency of health care use, health care office visits, and use of emergency room/emergency department.

Results

About 70% of older adults (aged 65+; mean age = 74.1, SD = 0.04) had drunk alcohol in their lifetime, and 15.8% were current moderate or heavy drinkers. Results of an adjusted multinomial logistic regression revealed that individuals with any lifetime alcohol use had more recent health care visits and more office visits (but not current heavy users) than lifetime abstainers. Former alcohol users had more ER/ED visits but current moderate users at all levels had fewer ER/ED visits than lifetime abstainers, controlling for sex, race, educational attainment, marital status, and concurrent tobacco use.

Conclusion

Older adults who have any history of alcohol use are more likely than abstainers to have had recent health care visits, more office visits, (but not moderate or heavy users), and less likely to have had an emergency department visit.

Keywords:

• Alcohol
• geriatrics
• health behaviors
• health care utilization

Disclosure statement

The authors have no financial conflicts to declare.

Notes

1 These response options were: “Lifetime abstainer” (<12 drinks in lifetime), “Former infrequent” (12+ drinks in lifetime, but never had 12 drinks in 1 year and none in the past year), “Former regular” (12+ drinks in lifetime and in 1 year, but none in past year), “Former, unknown frequency” (12+ drinks in lifetime, don’t know about in any 1 year, none in past year), “Current infrequent” (1-11 drinks in past year), “Current light” (3 drinks or less per week in past year), “Current moderate” (for males: 3–14 drinks per week; females: 3–7 drinks per week), “Current heavier” (male: more than 14 drinks per week; female: more than 7 drinks per week), and “Current drinker, frequency/level unknown”.

2 The original available responses were: “Never attended/kindergarten only”, “1st grade”, “2nd grade”, “3rd grade”, “4th grade”, “5th grade”, “6th grade”, “7th grade”, “8th grade”, “9th grade”, “10th grade”, “11th grade”, “12th grade, no diploma”, “GED or equivalent”, “High School Graduate”, “Some college, no degree”, “Associate degree: occupational, technical, or vocational program”, “Associate degree: academic program”, “Bachelor's degree”, “Master's degree”, “Professional School degree”, and “Doctoral degree”.

3 Multinomial logistic regression compares the association of the covariates on the likelihood of each category of the outcome variable.

4 Current heavy users were no different than lifetime abstainers in having had a health care visit in the previous 6 months.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse under grant number K01DA036681 (CB). The funding sources did not play a part of study design, data collection or analysis, or in the writing of the publication. The contents of the publication are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent official views of the National Institutes of Health.