Economic Impact of Care Burden

Analyses from a societal perspective additionally encompassed economic values for work absences (by patients and their caregivers), travel costs and privately incurred health expenditures. We included economic values of work absences by caregivers as caregivers of elderly frail people are potentially at increased risk of disrupted engagement within the labour market. Although data on the value of carers’ time is sparse, available data suggest that a 1% increase in hours of care translates, on average, into slightly more than a 1% decrease in hours of work [14 (link)]. Economic values of work absences were estimated as a product of the number of participant-reported days off work (for themselves and their caregivers) and national average daily earnings delineated by age, gender and occupational sector derived from the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey for Hours and Earnings [15 ]. Travel costs and privately incurred health expenditures were self-reported by trial participants.