• Nirav S Kapadia, Andrea M Austin, Donald Q Carmichael, Qianfei Wang, Elisabeth D Erekson, Diane Feskanich, Francine Grodstein, TostesonAnna N AANAThe Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Lebanon, New Hampshire.Norris Cotton Cancer Center, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Lebanon, New Hampshire., and BynumJulie P WJPWThe Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Lebanon, New Hampshire..
• The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Lebanon, New Hampshire.
• J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2018 Dec 1; 27 (12): 146614731466-1473.

AbstractBackground: To better understand health habits in older nurses versus the general population, we sought to determine whether the demographics, health care utilization, and Medicare spending by the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) participants enrolled in Medicare and a matched sample of Medicare beneficiaries meaningfully differed. Materials and Methods: Analytic cohorts included a random 20% sample of Medicare beneficiaries continuously enrolled in fee for service (FFS) Medicare that were propensity matched to the NHS participants continuously enrolled in FFS Medicare in a single year (2012). Matching was based upon preselected demographic factors and health status, using a nearest-neighbor matching algorithm to obtain a 1:1 match without replacement. Healthcare utilization and spending were compared between the two groups; we also stratified findings by number of chronic comorbidities. Results: Similar rates of utilization of primary care and most outpatient services. However, NHS participants had slightly higher rates of cancer screening, specialist care, and inpatient surgery were observed. When stratified by comorbidity status, the largest differences in utilization and spending were found in women with no comorbidity. Conclusions: The modest differences in observed healthcare utilization and spending suggest that older healthcare professionals may access care in fairly similar ways to the general population, and that health status may be a more important determinant of utilization and spending than health profession in older age groups.

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