Score Plan to Assess Risk of Hospital Admission

By LYNDSAY MOSS HEALTH CORRESPONDENT

EXPERTS have developed a system to predict how likely patients are to need hospital care, it emerged yesterday.

Researchers from Dundee University studied more than 90,000 residents in the Tayside area, looking at factors such as age, social deprivation and medication use.

They found 35 measures that could be used to give adults over 40 a risk score – the higher they score, the more likely they are to be admitted to hospital in the next year.

The aim of the system, which is set to be used permanently in the Tayside area, is to help health boards plan their resources to deal with hospital admissions. The scores can also be used to target those patients with the greatest risk of needing hospital treatment.

Dr Peter Donnan, one of the researchers who conducted the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, said emergency admissions to hospital were expensive and health boards wanted to avoid them wherever possible.

“There has been a drive towards treating more people in the community in recent years,” he said. “A huge cost to the NHS is hospitalisation. If you can manage people in primary care, it reduces pressure on hospitals.”

During the study, 6,793 of those taking part needed an emergency admission to hospital.

They were more likely to be older and male, living in a deprived area, have been in hospital before and taking a number of medications.

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