A Cost-effectiveness Analysis on Integrated Care of Health and Social Welfare Programs in Rural Areas

This paper is aimed towards evaluating an effectiveness of integrating health and social care for the elderly in rural areas in Korea. To quantitatively analyze the effectiveness of integrating care on care recipients’ satisfaction and care costs, the data were collected directly from two rural provinces where integrating health and social care for older people is implemented. Specifically, I used the collected data such as integrating care recipients' social care related quality of life (SCRQOL), the care recipients' demographic and socio-economic characteristics, hours of integrating care services to receive, and the care recipients' health conditions. Additionally budget data on integrating care in the two provinces are also obtained. Based on the aforementioned data, IV estimation for SCRQOL was employed, and then using this estimation, the optimal trajectory of service hours for the integrating care was calibrated. The results show that integrating health and social care improves care recipients’ SCRQOL. However cost effectiveness of the integrating care is not achieved under given budgets. This study suggests that the integrating care should be extended to achieve the optimal level of it under given budgets.