The rise in emergency admissions---crisis or artefact? Temporal analysis of health services data

BMJ 1999;319:158-159 ( 17 July )

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The rise in emergency admissions $---$ crisis or artefact? Temporal analysis of health services data

Paper p 155

Kieran Morgan, director of public health ^a, David Prothero, senior statistician ^a, Stephen Frankel, professor of epidemiology and public health medicine ^b.

^a Avon Health Authority, Bristol BS2 8EE, ^b Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 2PR

Correspondence to: Stephen Frankel stephen.frankel@bris.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

It is a common view that emergency admissions are increasing at up to 5% per year in the United Kingdom,¹ and that thisunsustainable rise "threatens the future of the NHS."² Theperceived rise in emergency admissions is invoked to explain thoserecurrent and well publicised crises that in turn support theview that there is a fundamental mismatch between demand and supplyin health care,³ as the reported trend is held to representa real and substantial increase in demand for hospitalcare.

Subjects, methods, and results

The data presented here reflect all emergency admissions in all medical and surgical specialties from 1989-90 to 1997-8 inan urban and rural population of 850 000 served by Avon HealthAuthority. Three trends are described: numbers of people receivinghospital treatment each year; numbers of admissions each year,where readmissions are additional events (admissions are hereprovider spell admissions, where transfer between hospitals withina trust remains a . . . [Full text of this article]

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