What is it about?
A very large step-increase in emergency admissions in the 2008/09 financial year in the English NHS led to a punitive 50% reduction in acute income on emergency activity above the 2008/09 out-turn. This was purely based on the assumption that the increase was due to acute hospitals lowering the threshold to admission. This is despite evidence to the contrary.
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Why is it important?
The large increase in 2008/09 was simply a repeat of similar events in 1993, 1996, 1999 and 2003. The assumption that acute Trusts colluded to achieve these step-increases is preposterous. More recent research points to outbreaks of a novel type of infectious agent with vastly complex patterns of small-area spread.
Perspectives
It has been expedient for politicians and the Department of Health to blame the NHS for these events, which are then used as the rationale for even more corrective policy actions. In the NHS policy supersedes any form of rational truth! For an extended series see, http://www.hcaf.biz/2010/Publications_Full.pdf
Dr Rodney P Jones
Healthcare Analysis & Forecasting
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This page is a summary of: Emergency preparedness, British Journal of Healthcare Management, February 2010, Mark Allen Group,
DOI: 10.12968/bjhc.2010.16.2.46421.
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