"Community based service providers' perspectives on frequent and/or avoidable admission of older people with chronic disease in rural NSW: a qualitative study" is an article now available online in BMC Health Services Research. Among the co-authors are our own local public health executives, Vahid Saberi and Paul Corben. They wished to establish some reasons why older people with chronic conditions were so often admitted to hospital.
The study involved intensive interviews with community health care providers to discover barriers which limited access to their services by older people with chronic disease. Both external barriers (such as patients' lack of awareness of services, poverty, or actual lack of services) and internal barriers (such as the patients' fear or unwillingness to accept their health status) were identified. The authors concluded that the reasons which prevent this group from accessing community health services, and thus being admitted to hospital, were complex. "Improving accessibility of services ... includes consideration of patients’ social, emotional and psychological ability and willingness to use services as well as those services being available and easily accessed."
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