Association between the 2012 Health and Social Care Act and specialist visits and hospitalisations in England: A controlled interrupted time series analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The 2012 Health and Social Care Act (HSCA) in England led to among the largest healthcare reforms in the history of the National Health Service (NHS). It gave control of £67 billion of the NHS budget for secondary care to general practitioner (GP) led Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). An expected outcome was that patient care would shift away from expensive hospital and specialist settings, towards less expensive community-based models. However, there is little evidence for the effectiveness of this approach. In this study, we aimed to assess the association between the NHS reforms and hospital admissions and outpatient specialist visits.

Methods and findings

We conducted a controlled interrupted time series analysis to examine rates of outpatient specialist v

SUBMITTER: Lopez Bernal JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5685471 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature