IAPT CHOICE
Developing effective strategies to reduce unscheduled care in chronic disease: Validation of a ‘red flag’ system that identifies patients who are at risk of becoming frequent users of unscheduled care
Background and Rationale
This study is a work package contributing to a five-year research programme funded by the National Institute for Health Research programme grant for applied research.
Use of urgent or unscheduled services is high in the UK and is common in people with long-term conditions. Those diagnosed with long-term conditions are more frequent users of the health care system than those without diagnosed long-term condition. In the UK, reduction of the use of unscheduled care in the NHS is a Department of Health priority. A number of recent health policy initiatives aim to provide the same or better services through optimal use of resources. Understanding how people access urgent and emergency care will help commissioners and providers shape services that are more responsive and appropriate for users’ and carers’ requirements. People with long-term conditions often have associated psychological and mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. Qualitative studies have demonstrated overwhelming anxiety at times of crisis, worry about the illness, and impaired coping lead to use of scheduled and unscheduled care. The outcome of medical illnesses is adversely affected by psychological morbidity. A number of studies had also shown that depression is associated with increase health care utilisation, medical costs, disability and health outcomes and frequent use of accident and emergency department. A multimodal intervention including psychological interventions is required if urgent and unscheduled care is to be reduced.
Aim
This research programme aims to understand the need for urgent or unscheduled healthcare and assess whether the need may be reduced if more comprehensive routine care is developed. The overall objective of this research programme is to develop effective psychosocial strategies to reduce the need for frequent unscheduled care in patients with four long term conditions; these are: diabetes, here coronary heart disease, treat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The research programme tests whether appropriate help with emotional difficulties leads to less demand for unscheduled care. One of the specific objectives of the research programme is to develop a ‘red flag’ system that will identify patients with long term conditions who are at risk of becoming frequent users of unscheduled care .
Objectives
The objective is to test the validity of a ‘red flag’ system which will be developed by the NIHR funded research programme for identifying patients with long term conditions who are at risk of becoming frequent users of unscheduled care. The present study will:
- Extract, de-identify and link demographic and relevant clinical data across primary and secondary healthcare services for analysis in two study sites in England
- Model predictors of utilisation of unscheduled care using de-identified demographic and relevant clinical data across primary and secondary healthcare services
- Compare the predictors of utilisation of unscheduled care with the ‘red flags’ to identify patients with LTC who are at risk of becoming frequent users of unscheduled care identified in the research programme
Method
The study design is a cohort study to model predictors of utilisation of unscheduled care using routinely collected clinical data in two localities.
Routinely collected clinical and activity data across primary and secondary healthcare services in two study sites will be extracted, de-identify and link to model predictors of utilisation of healthcare services including unscheduled care in the five year period. The study will also explore other sub-groups of unscheduled admissions.
Two potential areas are:
(1) Ambulatory care sensitive (ACS) conditions;
(2) People admitted for short periods (zero to three days) where no procedure is carried out.
Subjects and Setting: The study sample will consist of adult list populations of participating GP practices in two study sites: likely to be Doncaster, NW London or Birmingham.
Outcome measures: The primary outcome measures are utilisation of secondary care services, and included unscheduled care: inpatient episodes, out-patient appointments, and attendances of accidence and emergency (A&E) departments in the five-year period between 01/04/2007 and 31/03/2012.
Data sources for the study:
- GP Practice data from participating GP practices in the 2 study sites
- Secondary care data for participating GP practices
MIQUEST (Morbidity Information QUery and Export SynTax), a Department of Health approved data interrogation software, will be used to extract information from GP computer systems. Secondary care data will be accessed via the national SUS data. Appropriate demographic, clinical and activity information recorded in GP practice information systems and secondary care data recorded in the national SUS data will be de-identified and linked for analysis.
Specific approval from the National Information Governance Board for Section 251 of NHS Act 2006 and Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002 exemption to support the use of patient identifiable information for the purpose of de-identification will therefore be sought
