Nurse led projects were among the most effective in preventing older peoples’ emergency hospital admissions, research reveals.
Of the £60m allocated by the Department of Health to Partnerships for Older People Projects (POPPs) from 2006 to 2009, the most effective in saving money were nurse or health visitor run, including falls follow-ups, hospital at home schemes and rapid response teams.
A study by the University of Kent and London School of Economics based Personal Social Services Research Unit found primary care trusts running these projects saved up to £1.90 on emergency bed days for every £1 spent on POPPs.
PCTs focusing on primary prevention programmes such as gardening or befriending schemes, managed to save up to £1.40 for every £1 spent, but in other cases they cost more.
PSSRU lead researcher Karen Windle said the higher costs found in some of the pilots might be because they identified people who were not previously receiving care services but needed them.
She added that the research could not measure the potentially positive impact of low level projects on the patient’s quality of life, which might reduce emergency bed days in the future.
There were 29 POPP areas and each received around £1.8m.
The findings were presented at the Taking charge: Evidence for Self Care in the UK conference.
Ms Windle said: “The fiduciary [financial] constraints [in the future] are going to be appalling and we know preventative programmes are normally first out of the door.
“One of the things the research has demonstrated is that low level projects like these can make a huge difference to the health of older people; it has a huge impact on their health status and on their take-up of services. It will delay or prevent it.”
She said one lesson to draw from the research, which involved a survey of 15,000 care users, was that successful projects tended to be co-located with other services and had a wide geographic reach, while very specific or “boutique” schemes did less well.
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