Cost to National Health Service of Social Outcasts with Organic Disease

Abstract

The hospital medical records of a patient with chronic lung disease and intractable social problems have been analysed. Multiple admissions resulted in the patient spending nearly three years out of seven and a quarter years in Edinburgh hospitals and in the performance of repeated and often unnecessary medical investigations. Such patients are a source of considerable uneconomic expense to the National Health Service, but at present it is difficult to see how their medical and social demands can be met in any other way. © 1975, British Medical Journal Publishing Group. All rights reserved.