The influence of primary care quality on hospital admissions for people with dementia in England: a regression analysis.

Objectives: To test the impact of a UK pay-for-performance indicator, the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) dementia review, on three types of hospital admission for people with dementia: emergency admissions where dementia was the primary diagnosis; emergency admissions for ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSCs); and elective admissions for cataract, hip replacement, hernia, prostate disease, or hearing loss.

Methods: Count data regression analyses of hospital admissions from 8,304 English general practices from 2006/7 to 2010/11. We identified relevant admissions from national Hospital Episode Statistics and aggregated them to practice level.