Metrics details. Frailty, a syndrome resulting in heightened risk of negative outcomes for older adults, is increasing across the globe.
Frailty was assessed using a item Frailty Index FI. The association between frailty and self-reported health service utilisation was analysed for general practitioners GPs , specialists, overnight hospitalisations, traditional practitioners and self-medication.
Expenditure over the previous month included consulting, medications, hospitalisations and total expenditure. The mean SD FI was 0. Increased health service utilisation was associated with frailty for GP attendance, traditional practitioners and self-medication but not specialists or overnight hospitalisation. Pre-frailty and frailty were associated with increased total health service expenditure, with frailty also associated with aggregate consulting costs and medications.
Although frailty is associated with health service utilisation and expenditure in a variety of contexts, the study results suggest that such impacts may vary across the globe. The experience of frailty in LICs is likely to differ from that experienced elsewhere due to cultural traditions, attitudes to the health system, and accessibility, with more research needed. Peer Review reports. Over the decades between and , world populations will experience unprecedented growth in population ageing, and with it, a rapid increase in the proportion and number of older adults living with frailty [ 1 ].
Frailty is a relatively common clinical syndrome of declining physiological reserve across multiple systems that results in an elevated risk of adverse outcomes for older adults including falls, increased hospitalisation and early mortality [ 2 , 3 ]. Within high income countries HICs there is an increasing emphasis on early identification and treatment of frailty given emerging evidence that frailty is a dynamic [ 4 , 5 ] and potentially treatable condition [ 6 ].
