Preventable A&E attendances and primary care quality

PI Title: Dr Beth Parkinson

Lead Member: University of Manchester

General practice is in crisis and there are concerns that patient access is being negatively impacted. Knowing which patients
are being affected and how will help with developing a more targeted primary care response.

A commonly used indicator of how well primary care is managing patients are emergency admissions for ‘ambulatory care sensitive conditions’. These are conditions where primary care can help prevent the need for hospitalisation. However, admissions only capture a subset of potentially preventable emergency care use: patients who are admitted to hospital because of their condition. Patients that go to emergency departments, but are not admitted, are not captured by these measures. The size, composition and factors determining potentially preventable A&E attendances are currently unknown.

This study aims to measure the size of potentially preventable A&E use, trends over time, the types of patients that experience preventable A&E use, and whether preventable attendances are related to primary care quality.