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This is the last of five articles on ways of managing demand for health care
Little strong evidence exists to explain the sustained growth in demand for hospital services shown in the table, but changes in population structure, numbers of people living alone, pressures on primary care, risk management, patient expectations, and an increased ability to treat are frequently cited as possible reasons for this seemingly inexorable rise. 1
The desire to reduce, or at least contain, demand in the hospital sector is undoubtedly related to this growth and to the need to control costs. There is also a concern about the appropriateness of hospital care for many conditions, and there are growing opportunities to provide modes of care which may better meet patients' needs and may, in some circumstances, be cheaper.
The previous paper in this series discussed demand management at the interface between primary care and secondary care. Attempts to segment primary and secondary care are inevitably somewhat artificial. figure 1 , however, shows a highly simplified representation of the relation over time between the natural progression of a chronic illness and the thresholds between different healthcare sectors.
Summary points
There has been a sustained growth in demand for hospital services, which has been accommodated despite a decline in bed numbers
Further ways of managing demand for secondary care include condition-specific waiting lists, medical assessment units, use of protocols, and a single point of access to non-hospital alternatives
Once patients are in hospital protocols can help limit their stay, but the biggest impact will come from discharging patients to other forms of care
We need a new currency for secondary care, couched in terms of what needs to be done, rather than where it is done
Below a certain degree of severity (threshold A) a patient's condition can be managed within primary care alone; beyond it, some specialist ambulatory care input is required-for example, outpatient referral or specialist home nursing. As a condition becomes more severe, hospitalisation may become necessary (threshold B). The focus of this paper is on demand management within and beyond secondary care. This includes patients' arrival at the admission threshold (B), their subsequent inpatient episode, and the management of their demand for resources after discharge.
1991-2 | 1992-3 | 1993-4 | 1994-5 |