Simply measuring previous hospital admission rates would be misleading

Predicting who is at high risk of becoming acutely ill and requiring emergency admission to hospital has become an important issue for the NHS in England. The Department of Health intends that people with complex long term conditions, who are frequent users of unplanned secondary care, will be identified.1 After identification, a community matron or other health professional will care for these people by using case management, which has previously been defined as “a programme to intensively manage individual patients with uncontrolled or high cost conditions.”2 Community matrons could come from any branch of nursing, but district nurses are considered to be the group that will find it easiest to adapt to the role. This approach could reduce the number of …