Effects of employment on the use of health services
Report
|Updated
The Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services was commissioned by the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration and the Norwegian Directorate of Health to conduct a systematic literature search with a subsequent categorization of relevant publications. The commission was to identify research on the effects of employment on the use of health services.
Key message
Methods
We developed a search strategy for a systematic literature search. In July 2015, the search was carried out in social and medical scientific databases. Two researchers independently screened all identified references to assess inclusion according to predefined criteria.
Results
- The literature search resulted in 7471 references, after duplicates were removed
- In total, we identified 15 relevant references: one potential systematic review and 14 primary studies
- The potential systematic review summarized studies with samples from people with a schizophrenic disorder
- Four of the 14 primary studies included samples from the general population, while 10 studies included samples from various patient groups
The 10 primary studies with general population samples were categorized into two groups of outcomes:
- seven studies measured use of mental health services (need for new treatment)
- three studies measured use of somatic health services (compliance with recommended treatment)
In this systematic literature search with categorization we have not read the articles in full and hence neither critically evaluated the studies nor synthesized the results. Based on a reading of the abstracts, we can nevertheless see some patterns. In general, being employed/becoming employed might lead to less use of health services compared to being/remaining unemployed. Employment among individuals with recommended somatic health follow-up might give higher use of these health services. It is necessary to highlight that we are unable to draw any conclusions about the studies’ results since we only evaluated the abstracts.