The Factors Affecting the Use of Elderly Care and the Need for Resources by 2030 in Finland

A nation-wide interview survey data is used to analyse by means of ordered logit models the impacts of age, dependency and other factors on probabilities to use home and community care for the elderly. With these models and the age profile of the institutional care, we have made projections of service specific dependency, age and gender distributions by 2030. In our scenarios we assume that improvements in functional ability of the elderly will by 2030 increase the average starting-age for using home and community care by three or five years and delay the admission into institutional care by three years. We also make an assumption that quality of care is raised by increasing staffing levels in the care of elderly to the level which was considered sufficient for good quality care according to recommendations made by a recent expert working group. To meet the resource needs caused by the rise in the projected number of elderly population would require 1.9 % annual increase in operating costs. Increasing staffing levels to correspond good quality care would increase costs by 2.6 % annually. However, postponing the average starting-age by three years would leave the annual increase to 1.2 %, even with better care quality. In case good quality of care is desired already by 2010 operating costs would need to be increased by 3.6 % annually.