Comparison of specialist and generalist care.

Conclusions Compared with speciality care, general medicine units can safely and efficiently care for patients presenting to hospital with community-acquired pneumonia.What is known about the topic? Within the narrow range of any specific disease, generalist medical services are often cited as inferior in performance compared with a speciality service. This has implications for hospital resourcing, including both staffing and ward allocation.What does this paper add? This paper demonstrates that most patients admitted with a principal diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia were admitted to a generalist unit and did not apparently fare worse than patients admitted to a specialist service; patients admitted to a generalist unit spent less time in hospital and there was no difference in mortality or readmission rate compared with patients admitted to a specialist service.What are the implications for practitioners? The provision of generalist services at urban hospitals in Australia provides a safe alternative admission option for patients presenting with pneumonia, and possibly for other common acute medical conditions. PMID: 29386097 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Australian Health Review - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research