The Health Foundation: A descriptive analysis of health care use by high-cost, high-need patients in England
Kathryn Dreyer, Will Parry, Wikum Jayatunga & Sarah Deeny
This paper was produced as part of a research project to better understand the characteristics and health care utilisation of high-cost populations across seven countries, and explores health care use by the top 5 per cent of users of primary and secondary care services by cost.
Key Points:
- Despite the increasing financial pressure on the NHS over the past decades, there has been little research to understand the distribution and concentration of health care costs across the population.
- This paper explores for the first time the distribution of both primary and secondary health care costs in England, including GP-prescribed drug cost. Identifying high-cost, high-need patients and examining the way in which they use health care services might help to design initiatives to reduce costs or to improve efficiency.