Predictors of health and human services use by persons with dementia and their family caregivers

The aim of this study was to identify predictors of the use of health and human services by community residing persons with dementia and their family caregivers. Telephone interviews were conducted with a sample of 608 primary caregivers of community residing persons with dementia who were randomly selected from a state-wide dementia registry. The Anderson Behavioral Model of Health Care Use was used as the analytic framework. Hierarchical ordinary least squares regression models were developed to analyze predictors of health and human services use. Predisposing, enabling, and need variables explained 40.9% of the variance in service use, 29.8% of the variance in health service use, and 38.1% of the variance in the use of human services. Enabling variables explained more variance in the use of health and human services than did need or predisposing variables. In contrast to the health services utilization literature that points to the importance of need variables, the results of this study lend support to findings in the caregiving literature that indicate that enabling variables are at least as important as need variables in predicting the use of community services by family caregivers of persons with dementia.