ABSTRACT
This chapter presents variants of the cost-effectiveness question: 'What are the costs of producing outputs by community care and standard provision for people in varying circumstances?' It describes the relationship between costs, outputs and recipient circumstances, and provides estimates of the costs of producing combinations of outputs for different types of case. Costs incurred by clients and their carers included the living expenses of the elderly person, and the cost of residential care met by the old person. Further analyses suggested that community care had developed the potential complementarity of health and social services. Community care reduced costs of outputs to the National Health Service for the care of the very frail. Extreme frailty, incontinence of urine and risk of falling tended to reduce health service costs for recipients of community care, reflecting the reduced likelihood of hospitalisation.
