The study, titled “Effects of public long-term care insurance on the medical service use by older people in South Korea,” was authored by Yoon-Min Cho and Soonman Kwon and published in Health Economics, Policy and Law.
In South Korea, public long-term care insurance (LTCI) has been introduced in 2008 aimed at providing formal care for older people with cognitive and functional impairment and limitations in activities of daily living. This study aims to evaluate the effects of the introduction of LTCI on older people’s medical service use, including outpatient visits, inpatient services and longer stays (181 days or longer) in hospitals by implementing a quasi-experiment design with a generalised difference-in-difference method. The results showed that the introduction of LTCI did not change the use of outpatient medical services. For the inpatient services, hospitalisation rates declined by 2.7% as a result of the LTCI. Length of stay and inpatient expenses decreased by 15.6 and 9.5%, respectively. It can be implied from the study that utilisation of long-term care facility has become a substitute for some social admissions in hospitals.