title: Case finding in elderly people: validation of a postal questionnaire.
abstract: A continuing concern of primary care is to produce economical methods of case finding among elderly patients to reduce unmet need in practice populations. This paper reports the use of a postal questionnaire to identify high dependency groups and the use of statistical methods to produce a formula which weights the relative importance of different items in identifying patients with a high level of dependency. It appears possible to identify such high dependency cases reliably at the cost of assessing between one half and two thirds of the population aged 75 years and over.
authors.affiliation: Personal Social Services Research Unit, University of Kent.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bowns
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Challis
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Tong
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000368:Aged; D004739:England; D016330:Frail Elderly; D015577:Geriatric Assessment; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires