Modeling Hospitalization Decision and Utilization for the Elderly in China

Table 1

Description of variables.

	Variable and type	Definition	Mean	SD	Skewness	Kurtosis
Response	Number of hospitalizations (count variable)	Number of hospitalizations in the past two years	0.4135651	0.9690706	5.341749	59.89688
Need factors	Self-rated health (category variable)	Very bad or bad = 0 (reference); general = 1; good or very good = 2	1.467221	0.5201101	−0.0986902	1.542248
	ADL difficulties (category variable)	Unrestricted = 0 (reference); restricted = 1; very limited = 2	0.4175326	0.6554114	1.298326	3.421162
Predisposing factors	Age (continuous variable)	65–117 years old	84.08502	11.69399	0.1188886	1.886834
	Gender (category variable)	Male = 1; female = 0 (reference)	0.4445494	0.4969627	0.2242063	1.050268
	Marital status (category variable)	In marriage = 1; not in marriage = 0 (reference)	0.4549405	0.4980125	0.1811815	1.032827
	Years of education (continuous variable)	0–20 years	3.612507	4.378844	1.116702	3.493054
	Smoking or not (category variable)	Smoked in the past = 1; not smoking = 0 (reference)	0.3121103	0.4633984	0.8111184	1.657913
	Drinking or not (category variable)	Drunk in the past = 1; not drinking = 0 (reference)	0.2597771	0.4385536	1.097245	2.203946
Enabling factors	Household income (continuous variable)	0–99 (thousands of yuan)	43.40865	36.74898	0.4600004	1.676671
	Hospitalization medical expenditure (continuous variable)	0–99 (thousands of yuan)	4.456139	13.51289	4.847745	29.40199
	Out-of-pocket expenses (continuous variable)	0–99 (thousands of yuan)	2.347067	8.9899	7.401468	68.09451
	Medical insurance (category variable)	NRCMS = 1; UEBMI/URBMI = 2; free medical treatment = 3; others = 0 (reference)	1.218591	0.6759684	0.4205635	3.35609

Note. In the questionnaire, the family income, hospitalization expenses, and out-of-pocket expenses of hospitalization exceeding 100,000 yuan are recorded as 99,998. For the convenience of calculation, this study takes 1,000 yuan as the unit.