ABSTRACT
The hospital is the place for high-tech medicine and the highest levels of human skills. Some providers operate only acute care facilities, others also provide long stay and community facilities of various kinds. That meant an immediate apparent increase in activity, since many hospital stays consist of several episodes, as the Department of Health Statistical Bulletin, Acute Hospital Activity, reveal. The analysis includes all provider units carrying out some elements of acute care and has been made available to us on an anonymised basis, ie individual hospitals cannot be identified. The data used by the National Case-Mix Office combine trusts and what were in 1992/3 directly managed units. Thus there is no way of showing from published sources whether or not there is a sharp dividing line between the work done in general hospitals and that done elsewhere, nor between the district general hospital and the larger referral centres.
