“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Or so they say.

But there is little available evidence on these potential cost savings to the health care system when it comes to the prevention and management of frailty in older Australians.

But Flinders University’s Professor Jonathan Karnon is hoping to change that.

Using a Flinders Foundation Health Seed Grant, Professor Karnon will use a newly created dataset on the health status of older Australians and their use of health services to estimate potential cost savings if improvements were made in preventing and managing the frail.

At present, health services which exist to prevent and manage frailty may be undervalued because decision makers are not aware of the potential cost savings.

By comparing the costs of health services received by older people who are frail, and those who are not, this research hopes to better inform decision makers on how to spend the health budget to allocate funds to health services that provide the greatest benefits to the Australian population.

We want to better inform health services on how they can best prevent and manage frailty in older Australians.

Project title: Estimating the economic burden of frailty in Australia to inform policy and practice

Lead researcher: Professor Jonathan Karnon