Does addressing loneliness reduce the cost of care?
The research corpus does not contain evidence that addressing loneliness reduces the cost of care. A systematic review of older adults' social relationships and health care utilization cautions against assuming that reducing loneliness will decrease demand (Valtorta, 2018). The evidence for cost and utilization remains unsettled and runs in opposite directions. For example, while social isolation is associated with higher costs, loneliness specifically is sometimes associated with lower health care costs in adjusted models. Where health care utilization has fallen in studies, the change followed social support interventions rather than loneliness interventions. Furthermore, social disconnection predicts lower uptake of preventive services even as it predicts a higher volume of care contact, such as more physician visits and urgent care. The accurate framing for care teams is one of high demand meeting unmet need rather than simple disengagement. Because the corpus does not contain studies showing that loneliness interventions reduce total expenditures, this conclusion remains unsupported. The corpus covers health care utilization patterns and the mortality risks of isolation, but it does not establish a cost-saving link for loneliness reduction.