General practitioners' ability to predict outcome for elderly patients admitted to acute medical beds

This study investigated general practitioners' expectations about the management of their elderly patients following admission to acute medical beds. They were asked to predict the length of stay, main type of hospital care and outcome of the admission. There was very poor agreement between the predicted and the observed length of stay, type of care and outcome. The general practitioners underestimated the length of stay and severity of outcome, and overestimated the amount of acute medical intervention patients would receive in hospital. These results suggest that there is an urgent need to improve the level of communication between general practitioners and secondary care services.