A community-based continuing care program for the elderly disabled: an evaluation of planned intermittent hospital readmission.

Fifty of 217 patients on the Continuing Care Program of a Department of Geriatric Medicine have been studied in detail. All patients had sufficient disability to justify permanent admission to a traditional long stay or chronic unit. Utilizing flexible community-supporting services integrated with a hospital-based program of planned intermittent relief of the patients' supporters, patients were maintained in the community at an average cost of 79.5 hospital bed days per patient per annum. Within the near future, unprecedented numbers of persons over 75 years of age, with a high prevalence of chronic disability, will become the financial responsibility of health care systems of Western countries. The Continuing Care Program described may help contain the increasing demand for permanent admission to hospital and allow the disabled elderly citizen an alternative to institutionalization.