NUMBER OF READMISSION OF THOSE OVER 65 IS WORRYING: McINNES
December 30, 2011 12:01 AM
Scottish Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Alison McInnes MSP today expressed concern about the amount of people over the age of 65 who are being readmitted to hospital as an emergency within 28 days of being discharged from a medical specialty.
In answers to Parliamentary Questions submitted by Mrs McInnes, it was revealed that more than one in 10 elderly patients, who have been discharged after a stay in hospital, are readmitted within the month.
The figures range from 5.7% of people being readmitted in NHS Orkney to over 14% in NHS Tayside.
The North East MSP said: "I hope that these figures do not represent patients being sent home too early because doctors are under increasing pressure to meet waiting time targets.
"Older people can be vulnerable, especially after a stay in hospital, and we need to ensure that they are only released from hospital when they are ready to go home, especially around this time of year.
"Liberal Democrats want to shift the balance of care into the community so that older people are supported to live with dignity in their own homes.
"It is crucial that older people, their families and carers receive sufficient support after a stay in hospital to prevent, where possible, ending up in hospital again a couple of weeks later. This will require much better joined up working between the NHS and local authority social care.
"As well as being much better for individuals, reducing the number of emergency hospital admissions will save the NHS huge sums of money at a time when it is under considerable financial strain."
- The Parliamentary Questions submitted by Mrs McInnes
14 December 2011
Index Heading: Health and Social Care
Alison McInnes (North East Scotland) (Scottish Liberal Democrats): To ask the Scottish Executive what the 28-day hospital readmission rate was for people aged 65 and over from a (a) surgical and (b) medical speciality in 2010-11, broken down by NHS board.
(S4W-04338)
Ms Nicola Sturgeon :
Table 1 shows the 28-day hospital emergency readmission rate from surgical and medical specialties in the financial year ending 31 March 2011, for people aged 65 and over, broken down by NHS Board of residence.
All discharges (defined as a continuous stay in hospital), which meet the selection criteria, are included in the analysis. Each discharge is then compared with the next admission to hospital for the same patient. If this subsequent admission occurs within 28 days of the date of discharge for the previous hospital stay and is coded as an emergency admission, it is selected as a relevant readmission.
The period of 28 days is to some extent arbitrary, but has been widely adopted as maximising the trade off between including as many readmissions related to the initial discharge as possible and excluding as many unrelated readmissions as possible. The figures include readmissions within 28 days whether or not the readmission was related to the previous hospital stay.
Table 1: Number of discharges with a subsequent emergency readmission within 28 days, and hospital emergency readmission rate as a percentage of all discharges, for patients aged 65 and over; for Medical and Surgical Specialties by NHS Board of residence; Financial year 2010-11
|
NHS Board of residence |
Medical specialties |
Surgical specialties |
||||
|
Number of discharges |
Number of readmissions |
% readmitted |
Number of discharges |
Number of readmissions |
% readmitted |
|
|
Ayrshire & Arran |
21,375 |
2,607 |
12.2% |
19,695 |
1,271 |
6.5% |
|
Borders |
6,701 |
819 |
12.2% |
3,759 |
250 |
6.7% |
|
Dumfries & Galloway |
6,563 |
796 |
12.1% |
8,790 |
420 |
4.8% |
|
Fife |
16,890 |
1,810 |
10.7% |
11,504 |
695 |
6.0% |
|
Forth Valley |
9,124 |
1,047 |
11.5% |
8,825 |
516 |
5.8% |
|
Grampian |
15,054 |
1,736 |
11.5% |
11,167 |
645 |
5.8% |
|
Greater Glasgow & Clyde |
70,288 |
8,197 |
11.7% |
47,174 |
3,340 |
7.1% |
|
Highland |
16,714 |
1,936 |
11.6% |
14,208 |
863 |
6.1% |
|
Lanarkshire |
27,680 |
3,158 |
11.4% |
20,629 |
1,344 |
6.5% |
|
Lothian |
33,969 |
4,253 |
12.5% |
20,364 |
1,475 |
7.2% |
|
Orkney |
1,884 |
108 |
5.7% |
980 |
50 |
5.1% |
|
Shetland |
620 |
70 |
11.3% |
1,010 |
63 |
6.2% |
|
Tayside |
15,923 |
2,292 |
14.4% |
12,350 |
840 |
6.8% |
|
Western Isles |
1,462 |
184 |
12.6% |
1,867 |
101 |
5.4% |
|
All Scotland |
244,247 |
29,013 |
11.9% |
182,322 |
11,873 |
6.5% |
Source: ISD Scotland SMR01
Data for NHS Scotland for 2010-11 are estimated to be 95% complete. NHS Grampian and NHS Lanarkshire data are estimated to be 64% and 84% complete respectively. This is mainly due to the implementation of a new IT Patient Management System which has resulted in data submission backlogs for this time period. The NHS Boards are working to resolve these submission issues.
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