Full Story at HSJ 20 November 2017
Containing and reducing emergency hospital admissions is often seen as the holy grail of sustainable and better integrated healthcare. For most it has been elusive, but HSJ has identified and spoken to several areas which appear to have seen sustained reductions in recent years.
We looked for clinical commissioning group areas where there had been both steady decreases in total emergency admissions over two years, and reductions in their per capita rate over two years.
Some are likely to be down to changes to service provision, such as the downgrade of the emergency department at Stafford’s scandal hit hospital, some could be data artifacts, and some are in atypical health economies.
However, some areas said they believed their improvement was down to changes in healthcare, in particular identifying improving care hope support, and “virtual ward” interventions