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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Increased use of emergency services by older people after health screening | | Author(s) | Lesley Walker, Konrad Jamrozik, David Wingfield |
| Journal title | Age and Ageing, vol 34, no 5, September 2005 |
| Pages | pp 480-484 |
| Source | http://www.ageing.oupjournals.org |
| Keywords | Accident & emergency depts ; Usage [services] ; General practice ; Screening ; Evaluation ; Hammersmith and Fulham. |
| Annotation | Evaluation of the Keep Well At Home (KWAH) project in west London indicated that a programme of screening people aged 75+ had not reduced rates of emergency attendances and admissions to hospital. However, coverage of the target population was incomplete. The present analysis considers "efficacy" - whether individuals who completed the screening protocol as intended did subsequently use Accident and Emergency (A&E) services less often. The analysis found that there was an increase of 51% in the crude rate of emergency admissions in the year after the first phase screening, compared with the 12 months before assessment. This was most obvious in individuals deemed at high risk who also underwent the second phase assessment. The available data do not allow us to distinguish between several possible explanations for the paradoxical increase in use of emergency services. However, what seem to be sensible policies do not necessarily have their intended effect when implemented in practice. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-050926205 A |
| Classmark | LD6: QLD: L5: 3V: 4C: 82LE |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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