National Long-Term Care Channeling Demonstration. Channeling Effects on Formal Community-Based Services and Housing

摘要

Both the treatment group and control group members in the Channeling Demonstration used community services extensively. Channeling increased the use of services by the treatment group compared to the control group. The expectations at the outset of the demonstration were that such increases would be due to the fact that greater numbers of the elderly would remain in the community, as well as increased use of services by those already in the community. In reality, all the observed service-use increases were due to the latter effects, since no impact was observed on mortality or institutionalization. The largest increases in service use were observed for personal care and housekeeping services, which are the ones usually not covered by existing public programs or private insurance. There were increases in public and total costs. At the same time, there is evidence that in the Financial Control Model projects were able to use their purchasing power to reduce the per-unit costs of some services.