The future of general medicine

Improving care for patients with multiple long-term conditions admitted to hospital: challenges and potential solutions

Increasing numbers of people live with multiple long-term conditions. These people are more likely to be admitted to hospital, experience adverse outcomes and receive poorer quality care than those with a single condition. Hospitals remain organised around a model of single-organ, disease-specific care which is not equipped to meet the needs of people living with multiple long-term conditions. This article considers these challenges and explores potential solutions. These include different service models to provide holistic, multidisciplinary inpatient and outpatient care across specialty boundaries, training a workforce to deliver high-quality hospital care for people living with multiple long-term conditions, and developing technological, financial and cultural enablers of change. Considerably more research is required to fully appreciate the shared risk factors, underlying mechanisms, patterns and consequences of multiple long-term conditions. This is essential to design and deliver better structures and processes of hospital care for people living with multiple long-term conditions.

Models of generalist and specialist care in smaller hospitals in England: a mixed-methods study

Background

The increasing number of older, complex patients who require emergency admission to hospital has prompted calls for better models of medical generalist care, especially for smaller hospitals, whose size constrains resources and staffing.

Objective

To investigate the strengths and weaknesses of the current models of medical generalism used in smaller hospitals from patient, professional and service perspectives.

Methods

The design was a mixed-methods study. Phase 1 was a scoping and mapping exercise to create a typology of models of care, which was then explored further through 11 case studies. Phase 2 created a classification using the Hospital Episode Statistics of acute medical ‘generalist’ and ‘specialist’ work and described differences in workload and explored the links between case mix, typology and length of stay and between case mix and skill mix. Phase 3 analysed the relationships between models of care and patient-level costs. Phase 4 examined the strengths and weaknesses of the models of care through focus groups, a discrete choice experiment and an exploration of the impact of typology on other outcomes.

Results

In total, 50 models of care were explored through 48 interviews. A typology was constructed around generalist versus specialist patterns of consultant working. Twenty-five models were deployed by 48 hospitals, and no more than four hospitals used any one model of care. From the patient perspective, analysis of Hospital Episode Statistics data of 1.9 million care episodes found that the differences in case mix between hospitals were relatively small, with 65–70% of episodes accounted for by 20 case types. The skill mix of hospital staff varied widely; there were no relationships with case mix. Patients exhibited a preference for specialist care in the discrete choice experiment but indicated in focus groups that overall hospital quality was more important. From a service perspective, qualitative work found that models of care were contingent on complex constellations of factors, including staffing, the local hospital environment and policy imperatives. Neither the model of care nor the case mix accounted for variability in the length of stay (no associations were significant at p < 0.05). No significant differences were found in the costs of the models. Professionally, the preferences of doctors for specialist versus generalist work depended on their experiences of providing care and were associated with a healthy organisational culture and a co-operative approach to managing emergency work. Concepts of medical generalism were found to be complex and difficult to define, with theoretical models differing markedly from models in action.

Limitations

Smaller hospitals in multisite trusts were excluded, potentially leading to sample bias. The rapidly changing nature of the models limited the analysis of typology against outcomes.

Conclusions

The case mix of smaller hospitals was dominated by patients with presentations amenable to generalist approaches to care; however, there was no evidence to support any particular pattern of consultant working. Matching hospital staff to better meet local need and the creation of more collaborative working environments appear more likely to improve care in smaller hospitals than changing models.

Future work

The exploration of the relationships between workforce, measures of hospital culture, models of care, costs and outcomes in both smaller and larger hospitals is urgently required to underpin service reforms.

Study registration

This study is registered as Integrated Research Application System project ID 191393.

Funding

This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Services and Delivery Research programme and will be published in full in Health Services and Delivery Research; Vol. 9, No. 4. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation and endotracheal intubation decisions for adults with advance care directive and resuscitation plans in the emergency department

BACKGROUND

Emergency departments routinely offer cardiopulmonary resuscitation and endotracheal intubation to patients in resuscitative states. With increasing longevity and prevalence of chronic conditions in Australia, there has been growing need to uptake and implement advance care directives and resuscitation plans. This study investigates the frequency of the presence of advance care directives and resuscitation plans and its utilisation in cardiopulmonary and endotracheal intubation decision making.

METHODS

Retrospective audit of electronic patients' medical records aged ≥65 years presenting over a 3-month period. Data collected included demographics, triage categories, advance care directive and/or resuscitation plans/orders status.

RESULTS

A total of 6439 patients were included representing 29% of the total patient population during the study period. Participants were randomly selected (N = 300); mean age was 78.7 (±8.1) years. An advance care directive was present in only 8% and one in three patients (37%) had a previous resuscitation plan/order. Senior consultant was present at the department for consultation by junior doctors for most of the patients (82%). Acknowledgment of either advance care directive or resuscitation plans/orders in clinical notes was only 9.5% (n = 116).

CONCLUSION

Advance care directive prevalence was low with resuscitation plans/orders being more common. However, clinician acknowledgement was infrequent for both.

Geriatric medicine and geriatricians in the UK. How they relate to acute and general internal medicine and what the future might hold?

The Royal College of Physicians and its Future Hospitals Commission has a renewed focus on general internal medicine. But in 2015, most is in effect either acute medicine or geriatric medicine. Acute physicians and 'organ specialists' looking after inpatients on specialty wards or at the acute hospital 'front door' will need sufficient skills in geriatric medicine, rehabilitation, discharge planning and palliative care, as frailty, dementia and complex comorbidities may complicate the care of older patients with predominant speciality-defining complaints. In an era where we are urged to focus on patient-centred care, patients' preference for continuity and 'whole-stay', consultants must be recognised and respected. Ideally, this will require increasing numbers of geriatricians and acute physicians, more age attuned training for all; a shift in values and status. This should be backed by adequate capacity and rapid access to social and intermediate care services outside hospital, as well as adequate multidisciplinary staff and skills within the acute hospital to ensure that older patients' needs beyond the immediate complaints are not neglected. Meanwhile, geriatric medicine itself has diversified into specialised, community and interface roles, aligned with the integration agenda, and continues to contribute substantially to acute, general and stroke medicine. These developments are described here.