BMJ  2004;328:584 (6 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7439.584-b

Letter

Hospital bed utilisation in the NHS and Kaiser Permanente

Money should be spent on effective, well documented solutions

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

EDITOR—It took 35 clinicians and managers, travelling to and staying in California, to discover that the NHS can learn from Kaiser's approach to day bed use.1

I have been a Kaiser patient, have recently spent a year working in the NHS, and have now returned to work as a family practice mid-level clinician in the Medicare system in California. I could have told you for a fraction of the cost that beds are managed tightly here, with support from more cost effective support services, a more practical philosophical lifestyle approach, and less turf protection among doctors than in the NHS.

Money is not only being wasted on kind but absurd day bed use in the United Kingdom but also on junkets to California, New York, Minnesota, and Louisiana by NHS staff looking for solutions to the NHS workforce crisis.

Well trained, mid-level providers, such as the inaccurately named . . . [Full text of this article]

Margaret E Allen, physician assistant

East Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA margaret.allen@intelynx.net


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Relevant Article

Hospital bed utilisation in the NHS, Kaiser Permanente, and the US Medicare programme: analysis of routine data
Chris Ham, Nick York, Steve Sutch, and Rob Shaw
BMJ 2003 327: 1257. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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