Emergency room staff call it a “pop drop” — when a disabled older person comes in for medical attention, but it also seems as if the at-home caregiver who brought the patient there is simply seeking a break.

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Although it’s difficult to find hard data about the phenomenon, a new University of Michigan study suggests that tired family caregivers are associated with more frequent ER visits and higher health care costs for the patient.

In a paper in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, U-M researchers report their findings from a study of 3,101 couples ages 65 and older with one spouse acting as caregiver for his or her disabled partner.

Caregiver spouses took standard tests to measure their fatigue, mood, sleep habits, health and happiness. Over the next six months, researchers looked at the Medicare payments and emergency department visits for the disabled spouses.

During that stretch, emergency department visits were 23 percent higher among patients whose caregivers had scored high for fatigue or low on their own health status — even after accounting for many other factors about the patients.

Medicare costs were also high in that period: $1,900 more if a patient’s caregiver scored high for fatigue and $1,300 more if the caregiver scored high for sadness, even after all other factors were considered.