The total cost of inpatient hospital admissions to the NHS in England in 2009/10 is estimated at £20.5 billion, of which emergency admissions alone cost about £12.2 billion (60 per cent) (Department of Health 2011a, NHS reference costs 2009/104). The estimated cost to commissioners of emergency admissions for ACSCs is £1.42 billion (based on the National Tariff 2009/105), which accounts for 11.6 per cent of the total cost of all emergency admissions.6 This is equivalent to an average cost of £1,739 per ACSCs admission and an average cost of £170,590 for ACSCs admissions per general practice per year in England.
Cost of admissions for ACSCs by condition
• Figure 4 shows that emergency admissions for influenza and pneumonia (20 per cent), COPD (14 per cent), congestive heart failure (10 per cent) and dehydration and gastroenteritis (9 per cent) cost £755 million (53 per cent of the cost of all admissions for ACSCs).
• The average cost of an emergency hospital admission for ACSCs varied from £734 for ear, nose and throat infections to £4,002 for gangrene.
• The cost of emergency admissions for ACSCs was strongly associated with patients’ age, with 40 per cent (£563 million) of expenditure on patients who were 75 years old and over.
Compared with the pattern of admissions for ACSCs shown in Figure 2 (see p 4), the main difference in the pattern of costs is that these are amplified in the older age groups. One explanation is that older patients usually have more co-morbidities, so cases are often more clinically complex and thus more costly. The proportion of expenditure due to elderly patients is higher still once the cost of excess bed days8 is taken into account, as nearly 80 per cent of patients who stay in hospital for more than two weeks are those who are 65 years old and above (Poteliakhoff and Thompson 2011).
For further information, please follow:
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/files/kf/field/field_publication_file/data-briefing-emergency-hospital-admissions-for-ambulatory-care-sensitive-conditions-apr-2012.pdf