Health bulletin
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Comparative Study
Effect of general practitioner hospitals on district general hospital bed use in the Highlands of Scotland.
To examine hospital bed use by General Practices with and without access to General Practitioner beds. ⋯ These findings largely replicate work in England that found substantial decreases in General Medical and Geriatric Medicine bed use in Practices with access to GP beds, combined with an overall increase in occupied bed day use of 6-8% per 1000 patients. The lower use of surgical beds was unexpected, and may reflect more flexible use of GP beds in the Highlands for observation or rehabilitation, possibly related to the far greater distances involved than in the English studies.