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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Exploring the system-wide costs of falls in older people in Torbay | | Author(s) | Yang Tian, James Thompson, David Buck |
| Corporate Author | Kings Fund |
| Publisher | Kings Fund, London, 2013 |
| Pages | 12 pp |
| Source | Download: http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/files/kf/field/f... |
| Keywords | Falls ; Costs [care] ; Multi disciplinary ; Torbay. |
| Annotation | One in three people aged 65+, and half of those aged over 80, fall at least once a year. Falls cost the NHS more than £2 billion per year. With the number of people aged 65+ predicted to increase by 2 million by 2021, the costs incurred of treating patients across health, community and social care services are set to rise further. This paper uses Torbay's unique patient-level linked data set to explore the NHS and social care costs of the care pathway for older people in the 12 months before and after being admitted to hospital as a result of a fall. On average, these costs for each patient who fell were almost four times as much in the 12 months after admission for a fall as the costs of the admission itself. Over the 12 months that followed admission for falls, costs were 70% higher than in the 12 months before the fall. Comparing the 12 months before and after a fall, the most dramatic increase was in community care costs (160%), compared to a 37% increase in social care costs and a 35% increase in acute hospital care costs. While falls patients in this study accounted for slightly more than 1% of Torbay's over-65 population, in the 12 months that followed a fall, spending on their care accounted for 4% of the whole annual inpatient acute hospital spending, and 4% of the whole local adult social care budget. The authors discuss how linked health and social care data can be used to inform policy and practice. The findings strengthen the case for an integrated response for frail older people at risk of falls. However, to allow comparison of different models of care, other localities need to emulate Torbay's recording and analysis of whole-system data at the patient level - which, to the authors' knowledge, is the first time that such detailed analysis of the costs in the health and social care system has been carried out in relation to falls patients in England. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-130906009 E |
| Classmark | OLF: QDC: 3DM: 8DEH * |
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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