Management of admissions review annual health check

The review of admissions management is a component of the Healthcare Commission's annual healthcheck 2005/2006. Through considering a range of indicator, the annual health check assessment gives a view of how well the trust is managing inpatient admissions. Fifteen indicators grouped together under five themes; emergency access, elective access, appropriateness, emergency efficiency and elective efficiency were chosen as the basis for the assessment.

In common with other reviews included in the annual health check, trusts are placed in the four categories - weak, fair, good and excellent. The review is based on relative assessments and an overall assessment of weak implies that the trust is lagging behind other trusts in key delivery areas. It does not in itself suggest unacceptable practice. Similarly those scoring excellent are ahead of other trusts but still have scope for improvement.

Trusts have to balance the needs of different patients, and, when managing admissions, must, in particular, ensure that there are beds available both for patients who require emergency admission and for those admitted from a waiting list. The assessments give an indication of how trusts have been managing with achieving this balance. Some trusts however achieve consistently good performance across all indicators.

The data collected during the review was first shared with trusts in March 2006. The Healthcare Commission has been working in partnership with the Audit Commission which has delivered local reports on performance in this topic to each trust. These reports, together with the comparative data, should help trusts to drill down to identify some of the underlying reasons for any performance problems. Many trusts should already been taking action to address any problems

Annual health check Admission management indicators and scoring provides details of the scoring methodology, together with the rationale and definition of each indicator.

Annual health check Management of admissions indicators and scoring (pdf 314kb) (opens new window)

Click the following link to download an excel spreadsheet containing a summary of the scores and individual scores for each trust:

Management of admissions trust results (xls 200kb) (opens new window)

The Healthcare Commission are currently drawing out national issues from the data collected as part of this review and intend to publish a National Report on management of admissions in acute trusts later in the year.

To obtain the annual health check report for a particular trust select the appropriate trust from the options below.

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• Aintree Hospitals NHS Trust [pdf | 85kb]
• Airedale NHS Trust [pdf | 84kb]
• Ashford and St Peter's Hospitals NHS Trust [pdf | 84kb]

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