Long-term effects on healthcare utilisation among spouses of persons with stroke

BACKGROUND: Stroke is a common and costly disease affecting the person with stroke and their relatives. If the negative effect on the health of informal caregivers to a person with stroke translates into an increased healthcare consumption has not yet been studied. Further, the importance of including costs and health consequences of informal caregiving in health economic evaluation supporting decision-making is an ongoing discussion. Therefore, this study aims to estimate the long-term effect on healthcare utilisation among spouses of persons with a first-ever stroke. METHOD: The study population consists of spouses of persons with first-ever stroke events in 2010–2011 and a reference population matched on age, sex and municipality of residence. We have access to information on healthcare utilisation five years before and five years after the stroke event for the whole study population. Using a difference-in-difference approach, the main analysis estimates the effects on primary and specialist outpatient care visits and days with inpatient care per year. Further, we analyse the healthcare utilisation among spouses depending on the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) of the person with stroke. RESULTS: Our main analysis indicates that spouses have slightly more days with inpatient care five years after the stroke event than the reference population (p = 0.03). In contrast, spouses have fewer primary and specialist outpatient care visits than the reference population following the stroke event. In the analysis where spouses’ healthcare utilisation is analysed according to the mRS status of the person with stroke, we identify the most notable change in the number of visits to specialist outpatient and days with inpatient care among spouses of persons with mRS 3 (dependency in daily activities). CONCLUSION: Our study suggests that being the spouse of a person with stroke has minor effects on healthcare utilisation. Further, healthcare utilisation is most affected among the spouses of persons with stroke and dependency in daily activities (mRS 3). According to our results, it does not seem vital to include spouses of persons with stroke healthcare utilisation in health economic evaluations. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-023-10286-0.