Preventable Emergency Hospital Admissions Among Adults With Intellectual Disability in England

Adults with intellectual disabilities experience poorer physical health and health care quality, but there is limited information on the potential for reducing emergency hospital admissions in this population. We describe overall and preventable emergency admissions for adults with vs without intellectual disabilities in England and assess differences in primary care management before admission for 2 common ambulatory care-sensitive conditions (ACSCs).

We used electronic records to study a cohort of 16,666 adults with intellectual disabilities and 113,562 age-, sex-, and practice-matched adults without intellectual disabilities from 343 English family practices. Incident rate ratios (IRRs) from conditional Poisson regression were analyzed for all emergency and preventable emergency admissions. Primary care management of lower respiratory tract infections and urinary tract infections, as exemplar ACSCs, before admission were compared in unmatched analysis between adults with and without intellectual disabilities.

The overall rate for emergency admissions for adults with vs without intellectual disabilities was 182 vs 68 per 1,000 per year (IRR = 2.82; 95% CI, 2.66-2.98). ACSCs accounted for 33.7% of emergency admissions among the former compared with 17.3% among the latter (IRR = 5.62; 95% CI, 5.14-6.13); adjusting for comorbidity, smoking, and deprivation did not fully explain the difference (IRR = 3.60; 95% CI, 3.25-3.99). Although adults with intellectual disability were at nearly 5 times higher risk for admission for lower respiratory tract infections and urinary tract infections, they had similar primary care use, investigation, and management before admission as the general population.

Adults with intellectual disabilities are at high risk for preventable emergency admissions. Identifying strategies for better detecting and managing ACSCs, including lower respiratory and urinary tract infections, in primary care could reduce hospitalizations.