A cross-sectional study analysing national Scottish data sets
A new article published 19 July 2018 takes an in-depth look at asthma in Scotland.
Researcher, and one of the authors of the paper, Mome Mukherjee, explains what is important about this new study, below.
"Health systems around the world are grappling with how to maintain the quality of care within the context of health budgets that are failing to keep up with inflation. A key driver of the increase in healthcare expenditure is the greater proportion of people living with long-term conditions. Of particular relevance in this respect is the finding that a very high proportion of healthcare expenditure (~50%) is spent on managing a very small proportion of the population, thus offering the potential that it may be possible pro-actively to identify and optimise management of these so called ‘high-need, high-cost’ patients.
This work has hitherto never been undertaken in the context of respiratory disorders. To investigate whether it is possible to identify a subset of high-need, high-cost patients, we built on our previous mapping of asthma in the UK (reported in BMC Medicine) and undertook a more detailed, granular analysis of Scottish data. This revealed a pyramidal population structure, in which a very small proportion of patients were responsible for high intensive healthcare utilisation in hospitals thereby providing support to the idea that active case management models need to be developed and evaluated.
To our knowledge, this is the first time a population profile of asthma has been created at a national level in Europe. We believe such analyses as this, are important to support health policy and planning, as well as informing key deliberations regarding the care of asthma. The work can also serve as an exemplar for other long-term conditions."
Full paper
Read the full paper online in the journal npj Primary Care Respiratory Medicine
Cite as
Mukherjee, M., B. I. Nwaru, et al. (2018). "High health gain patients with asthma: a cross-sectional study analysing national Scottish data sets." npj Primary Care Respiratory Medicine 28(1): 27.