Access to health services

The overall aim of the work was to inform the NHS Service Delivery and Organisation (SDO) R & D Programme about the theory and evidence on carers’ access to health care.

General medical practitioners (GPs) and members of the primary care team have a pivotal role in supporting unpaid carers in their caring role and helping them to maintain their own health and well-being. This paper investigates the difference that caregiving makes to individuals’ access to and use of GP and primary care services. It is based on longitudinal analysis of carers’ contacts with GPs, and a review of the literature including evaluations of measures to improve primary-care-based support for carers. Men increase their consultation rates with GPs when taking on a caring role.

This study assesses the effect of having informal support available at home on inpatient care use in Switzerland. The main contributions are to consider the availability of care regardless of its source, measured by multiple-adult living arrangements, and to examine this effect by type of inpatient care and source of potential support. A two-part model with region and time fixed effects is estimated to determine the impact of informal care availability on the likelihood of hospitalisation and length of stay, conditional on hospitalisation.

By looking at carers’ experiences, this report takes this case forward by exploring in more detail the evidence and opportunities afforded by telecare and telehealth technologies and the barriers to greater take-up.

Changes in the living circumstances of people with learning disabilities have seen responsibility for their health become the provenance of paid-and family-carers. Thirteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with three family-carers and ten paid-carers. Findings revealed that the role of these carers was undefined, leading to difficulty in deciphering who was responsible for the health care of the people they supported, with some paid-carers claiming that health was outwith their remit.

May carers are isolated and GP surgeries are often their first point of contact for support and resources. This article describes the role of a carer support and development worker, whose aim is to provide the support carers need. Cites 19 references. [Journal abstract]