Abstract
Objective: to measure the net costs to the health and personal social services of an early supported discharge policy for stroke
Design and setting: cost analysis, using data from a pragmatic randomized controlled trial conducted in three hospitals in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Subjects: 92 people admitted with acute stroke within 72 h of onset from their own homes with no co-morbidity likely to affect rehabilitation.
Main outcome measures: health and personal social service costs.
Results: early supported discharge reduced median length of hospital by almost half (14 days vs 26 days, P = 0.02). The costs of the service were and £7155 per patient compared with and £7480 for conventional hospital care. Sensitivity analysis demonstrated that this result was robust to changes in values of bed days and exclusion of particular resource use items. Sub-group analysis suggested that costs were related to physical dependency
Conclusions: early supported discharge provided a cost-effective alternative in the management of stroke care. However, a larger study is required to assess the generalisability of the results and long-term cost effectiveness.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 345-351 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Age and Ageing |
Volume | 27 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - May 1998 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Cost analysis
- Early supported hospital discharge
- Stroke
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ageing
- Geriatrics and Gerontology