Comparing primary and secondary health-care use between diagnostic routes before a colorectal cancer diagnosis: cohort study using linked data.

Background: Survival in cancer patients diagnosed following emergency presentations is poorer than those diagnosed through other routes. To identify points for intervention to improve survival, a better understanding of patients' primary and secondary health-care use before diagnosis is needed. Our aim was to compare colorectal cancer patients' health-care use by diagnostic route.

Effect of a home-based end-of-life nursing service on hospital use at the end of life and place of death: a study using administrative data and matched controls.

Objective: To assess the effect of routinely delivered home-based end-of-life care on hospital use at the end of life and place of death.

Design: Retrospective analysis using matched controls and administrative data.

Setting: Community-based care in England.

Case management for at-risk elderly patients in the English integrated care pilots: observational study of staff and patient experience and secondary care utilisation.

Introduction: In 2009, the English Department of Health appointed 16 integrated care pilots which aimed to provide better integrated care. We report the quantitative results from a multi-method evaluation of six of the demonstration projects which used risk profiling tools to identify older people at risk of emergency hospital admission, combined with intensive case management for people identified as at risk. The interventions focused mainly on delivery system redesign and improved clinical information systems, two key elements of Wagner's Chronic Care Model.

Hospital activity and cost incurred because of unregistered patients in England: considerations for current and new commissioners.

Background: Commissioners are responsible for providing health care for defined geographical areas. A lack of comprehensive national and local information on health needs of unregistered populations makes health service planning difficult.

Methods: A cross-sectional study using Hospital Episode Statistics to quantify the level of inpatient and outpatient activity, and associated cost by patients not registered in primary care in English NHS hospitals.

Volumetric abnormalities predating the onset of schizophrenia and affective psychoses: an MRI study in subjects at ultrahigh risk of psychosis.

It remains unclear whether brain structural abnormalities observed before the onset of psychosis are specific to schizophrenia or are common to all psychotic disorders. This study aimed to measure regional gray matter volume prior to the onset of schizophreniform and of affective psychoses. We investigated 102 subjects at ultrahigh risk (UHR) of developing psychosis recruited from the Personal Assessment and Crisis Evaluation Clinic in Melbourne, Australia.