No easy solutions for frequent hospital attendances

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7540.552-b

BMJ 2006;332:552 (4 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7540.552-b

Letter

No easy solutions for frequent hospital attendances

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

EDITOR—Hitchen writes that a partnership between the NHS'sHealth and Social Care Information Centre and the health researchcompany Dr Foster will publish data on patients who repeatedlyuse hospital services.¹

Professionally, I know that some community health services canhelp prevent admission to hospital. But, as the King's Fundreport on predicting hospital admissions showed, it is not easyto predict which of these patients will be admitted again inthe next 12 months.² As a result, although community supportwill be potentially beneficial, it is not a quick fix that canbe targeted directly to the right patients. A substantial partof the cost of community support will go on patients who wouldnot be back in hospital this year.

I would not begrudge them support, but we must beware of assumingthat big savings can be made or lots of hospital beds freedup. If . . . [Full text of this article]

Peter A West, senior associate

York Health Economics Consortium, University of York, York YO10 5NH paw11@york.ac.uk