Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, ul. Dluga 44/50, Warsaw, Poland.
Appl Health Econ Health Policy. 2019 Aug;17(4):523-532. doi: 10.1007/s40258-019-00472-9.
The proportion of older people in many countries, including Poland, is expected to increase, which will lead to a rise in healthcare costs.
This study aims to analyse the impact of older adults' physical activity on public spending on healthcare in Poland over the long term.
To include the physical activity factor needed for our long-term projections, we modified the macro-simulation model used by the European Commission in Poland. We used the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe database to calculate the number of healthcare users depending on their level of physical activity. We used three measures of healthcare users: people with chronic diseases, people who were in hospital or visited a doctor more than once in the previous year, and people who subjectively evaluated their health as fair or poor.
We found that a higher level of physical activity in older adults is associated with lower public expenditure on healthcare for all measures adopted. However, the magnitude of this effect differed depending on the measure used, with gains ranging from 0.4 to 1.2% of gross domestic product per year by the end of the projection horizon.
Our findings provide a strong argument for social policy in Poland to intensify the promotion of physical activity in society to decrease future healthcare costs of older adults.
包括波兰在内的许多国家的老年人比例预计将增加，这将导致医疗保健成本上升。
本研究旨在分析波兰老年人身体活动对长期公共医疗支出的影响。
为了纳入我们长期预测所需的身体活动因素，我们修改了欧盟委员会在波兰使用的宏观模拟模型。我们使用欧洲健康、老龄化和退休调查数据库来计算根据身体活动水平的医疗保健使用者数量。我们使用了三种医疗保健使用者的衡量标准：患有慢性病的人、过去一年住院或看医生超过一次的人以及主观上认为自己健康状况一般或较差的人。
我们发现，老年人更高水平的身体活动与所有采用的医疗保健公共支出降低有关。然而，这种影响的幅度因所使用的衡量标准而异，到预测期结束时，每年国内生产总值的收益范围在 0.4%至 1.2%之间。
我们的研究结果为波兰的社会政策提供了有力论据，即加强在社会中推广身体活动，以降低未来老年人的医疗保健成本。
