Intermediate care for older people.

Up to 40 per cent of older people do not go to hospital after calling an emergency ambulance and until recently were not referred on to any other community services. This article describes how a multidisciplinary working group developed and evaluated a protocol to enable older people to be referred to intermediate care services after calling an emergency ambulance. A total of 54 patients were monitored after referral to intermediate care to assess adherence to the protocol and outcomes.