Innovative changes to care pathways can increase hospital admissions - really? Well, a report from the Nuffield Trust in March 2011 suggests there is little or no evidence that community interventions lead to a reduction in hospital use.The report is a good one with a firm research founding - in the absence of any randomised control data. It points out that redesigning pathways can discover unmet need which may account for an increase in hospital attendance.
What caught my attention was that using their own data, each of the eight interventions assessed demonstrated a reduction in hospital use. However, when compared to control groups, there was in fact an increase. This leads me to one of the ongoing issues I have with "innovation" or "improvement" projects. It's easy to come up with a measurement system and set of goals and sample size that has inbuilt biases to ensure good results - and win prizes. But in the end, improvement needs to be tested against control groups.
I recommend you read the full research report, if only to grasp the seriousness of this issue.
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