Marital Status and Hospital Use Report of a Prespective Case Study of Elderly People in the Community

Abstract

A central aim of this study was an examination of the extent to which the higher rate of use of acute hospital beds by non-married than married patients might be attributed either to their greater clinical needs for hospital care or to differences in the doctors' perceptions of and responses to the social needs of each group. The study took the form of a prospective review of 407 elderly (65+) patients admitted to the medical and surgical wards of a district general hospital during a period of five months