Impact of a link worker social prescribing intervention on non-elective admitted patient care costs: A quasi-experimental study
John Wildman and
Josephine M. Wildman
Social Science & Medicine, 2023, vol. 317, issue C
Abstract:
Healthcare systems in many countries are enthusiastically adopting link worker social prescribing interventions that aim to tackle the social determinants of health by linking patients to voluntary and community sector activities and sources of support to address their social needs and improve condition management. Social prescribing interventions aim to improve health and reduce healthcare spending. However, despite the diversion of healthcare budgets to fund social prescribing, we still lack robust evidence for its effectiveness. In this study we evaluate whether participation in a social prescribing intervention reduced non-elective admitted patient care use and costs for 8283 patients aged between 40 and 74 years, with a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes and living in an area of high socioeconomic deprivation in north-east England. Patients were followed for a total of 6 years: 2 years pre-intervention and 4 years post intervention. Exploiting a natural experiment, we used a two-part difference-in-differences regression model to estimate costs conditional on healthcare use. We also estimated intervention effects across several intervention and control groups and sample subgroups. Participation in the intervention resulted in reductions of up to -£77.57 [95% CI: -152.30, -2.84] (for high engagement patients) per patient, per year, in non-elective care costs. Reductions were greater for patients with higher levels of engagement with the intervention. Sub-group analyses showed greater cost reductions for non-White patients, older patients, and patients without additional co-morbidities. Our findings suggest that engagement with a link worker social prescribing intervention may reduce non-elective healthcare spending, perhaps through enabling better condition management that results in fewer avoidable health crises.
Keywords: Social prescribing; Non-elective admissions and costs; Policy analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953622009042
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:317:y:2023:i:c:s0277953622009042
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01
DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115598
Access Statistics for this article
Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian
More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().