BMJ 1996;312:1102 (27 April)

Letters

Alternatives to hospital care

Study's results may not apply elsewhere

EDITOR,--I wish to urge caution in extrapolating the results of Joanna Coast and colleagues' study, which implies that a tenth of patients admitted to general hospitals could be relocated to more appropriate care.1 I am leading a "total fundholding" project in Winchester, in which the practice will purchase all care on behalf of our patients, and have been examining the practice's use of acute services. We obviously have an interest in using expensive acute services carefully, and to that end we have followed up all our acute admissions through hospital, using an experienced ward sister as a project nurse. She has objectively assessed the appropriateness of continuing admission daily by using the Radcliff bed instrument. This instrument allows a precise description of the reasons for continuing stay and allows us, using software that we have devised, to analyse appropriate use of hospital beds.

On . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Alternatives to hospital care: what are they and who should decide?
Joanna Coast, Abby Inglis, and Stephen Frankel
BMJ 1996 312: 162-166. [Abstract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Ogilvie, D (2005). Hospital based alternatives to acute paediatric admission: a systematic review. Arch. Dis. Child. 90: 138-142 [Abstract] [Full text]  
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