Journal of public health medicine
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J Public Health Med · Sep 2000
Variation in general practice medical admission rates for elderly people.
Emergency medical admissions are rising, particularly in the elderly. Variation in admission rates between general practices has received little attention, and requires explanation. ⋯ Admission rates show considerable variation between practices, which is only partly explained by morbidity rates, and consistency over 3 years.
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Ambulance services produce a large quantity of data, which can yield valuable summary statistics. For strategic planning purposes, an economic framework is proposed, and the following four resource allocation questions are answered, using data from the Surrey Ambulance Service: (1) To satisfy government response time targets, how many additional ambulances will be required, ceteris paribus? (2) To minimize average response time (r*) with given resources, how should ambulances be rostered temporally? (3) Which innovations are worth undertaking? (4) How would an increase in demand affect r*? ⋯ Ambulance services will be better able to determine which innovations are worth undertaking. Policy makers will be better placed to determine funding levels to achieve response time targets.