Audit/Data

The National Audit Office reports that GPs are not providing the required follow-up after a diagnosis of severe frailty, and that no national dataset records who is affected by deprivation.

An analysis of 112,930 patient visits across four US hospitals finds earlier entry of an estimated discharge-ready date associated with fewer days spent in hospital after a patient was medically ready to leave.

A UK-wide mixed-methods survey of 256 palliative and end-of-life care researchers finds funding, workload and job insecurity are the principal threats to the research capacity the field depends on.

A national matched cohort of 3,335 hospital-at-home patients in Israel reports lower 30-day mortality and readmission than hospital-ward admission, at a scale the NHS's own virtual ward evidence has not yet matched.

A US multicentre cohort of over 6,600 older surgical patients finds a formal accreditation-style verification programme, not guidance alone, associated with a rise in geriatric vulnerability assessment.

A National Audit Office report finds hospital patient flow in England 'is not working properly', quantifying corridor waits, 24-hour A&E waits and the cost of delayed discharge — and the British Geriatrics Society's same-day response locates the fix in community capacity and front-door frailty diversion rather than acute expansion.

The first UK-wide survey of palliative virtual wards finds only 15% of 22 responding services use remote-monitoring technology, and three-quarters rely on charitable funding, with two services already closed for lack of it.

A national point-prevalence audit across major trauma centres and trauma units in England, Wales and Scotland finds only 41% of older major trauma patients had a documented treatment escalation plan, and only a fifth of those were on a palliative or end-of-life care pathway.

A national study comparing four spatial-accessibility methods across 295 German inpatient hospices finds 90.3% of the population can reach a hospice within 30 minutes by car, but accessibility declines sharply in rural areas once distance-decay is accounted for.

A large real-world cohort study of 887 patients over nearly five years finds very high patient satisfaction and perceived safety in a telemedicine-based, virtual-first hospital-at-home programme.

A US research letter finds rural hospice patients are more likely to die in nursing homes, rely more heavily on unpaid family caregiving, and receive less intensive paid hospice support than urban patients.

A repeated national survey of Dutch memory clinics spanning 1998 to 2023 finds patient volume per clinic has more than doubled as the proportion of attendees diagnosed with dementia has fallen, with a third of clinics reporting infrastructure not yet ready for new disease-modifying treatment pathways.

A cross-sectional survey of stroke rehabilitation services in 30 European countries finds inpatient provision is near-universal, but early supported discharge, community-based rehabilitation and telerehabilitation are markedly less consistently available.

A decade-long national analysis of community nursing services in England finds referrals rose by roughly half while median time on caseload fell by two-thirds, with end-of-life care increasingly compressed into shorter, more out-of-hours contact.

A US claims-database cohort of 7,898 mechanically ventilated ICU survivors finds 5.3% newly prescribed a psychoactive medication within 30 days of discharge, of which 43% lacked a documented supporting diagnosis, persisting out to two years.

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy's quarterly member survey finds 79% of NHS physiotherapy staff report insufficient staffing for patient need, with recruitment freezes, deleted posts and whole-service cuts rising year on year.

A two-site English cohort study of 43,970 patients finds same-day emergency care associated with substantially lower 30-day mortality and reattendance than short-stay admission, though the authors caution the difference likely reflects lower-acuity patient selection rather than pathway superiority alone.

A national Australian workforce-planning model projects that specialist palliative care supply will fail to keep pace with mortality-driven demand through 2045, with outer regional areas bearing a disproportionate share of unmet need.

A retrospective cohort of almost 980,000 US hospital encounters finds only 26.6% had documentation of a medical power of attorney, with documentation varying significantly by sex, marital status and diagnosis.

A Chartered Society of Physiotherapy member survey finds 49% of NHS hospital physiotherapists report losing rehabilitation space, with members linking the loss to rising waiting lists and worsening patient disability.

A three-year audit of an outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy referral pathway finds nearly a third of referrals were not taken onto the service after specialist screening, avoiding an estimated 13,909 inpatient or IV-therapy days.

A retrospective NHS audit found patients coded onto the Gold Standards Framework were far more likely to have a documented advance care plan and to die outside hospital than uncoded patients.

NHS England published its first monthly corridor care dataset on 11 June 2026, recording an average of 2,940 patients per day receiving care in clinically inappropriate settings in May 2026.