Profiling Elderly and Younger Patients Attending Health Care Facilities: Implications for Health Care Planning

The Objective of this paper is to profile elderly and younger patients who attend health care facilities in Saudi Arabia and to identify health facilities used by these groups of patients. The data were collected by a self-administered questionnaire from elderly and younger patients during July 2008. One-thousand patients were selected randomly during their attendance at five primary health care centers in Riyadh City, of which 854 (85.4%) successfully completed the questionnaire. The data were collected on selected characteristics, including predisposing, enabling and need characteristics relevant to the study. Chi-square and t-test were used to present the results. Approximately three quarters (77.6%) of elderly patients and half (48.9%) of younger patients used health services during the past 12 months. The results indicate that elderly people had significantly higher mean scores of visits to primary health care centers, emergency departments and were more likely to be hospitalized than younger patients. On the contrary younger patients were more likely to refer themselves to private pharmacy for self-treatment. The study identified the profile of patients using these facilities. Elderly people constitute a unique subset of health services users. This vulnerable group of people tends to make an increase use of the health resources which should prompt policy makers in the Kingdom to consider their characteristics and propose plans to provide them with relevant health services. Saad Abdullah Al-Ghanim 244