What is it about?
Death marks the end of a 12-month period of escalating use of acute services. For this reason, a count of deaths (rather than age-standardized mortality) is a good proxy for changes in end-of-life related clinical workload. In this paper the number of clinical staff in the NHS in England is divided by the number of deaths (all-cause mortality) to give a ratio which measures how clinical workload may fluctuate over time.
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Why is it important?
The role of end-of-life is a totally neglected variable in current health service demand forecasting models. The number of deaths in England has been increasing since 2011 and is projected to continue to increase for the next 30 years. Demographic-based models fail to recognize this additional component of demand.
Perspectives
This is part of a longer series investigating how deaths influence NHS demand and why current demand models are fundamentally flawed. Current models are vastly underestimating future demand and have led to the construction of inadequately sized hospitals. Part of a longer series which can be accessed at http://www.hcaf.biz/2010/Publications_Full.pdf
Dr Rodney P Jones
Healthcare Analysis & Forecasting
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Clinical workload trends, British Journal of Healthcare Management, June 2018, Mark Allen Group,
DOI: 10.12968/bjhc.2018.24.6.308.
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