Effect of NHS and Community Care Act Problem with interpretation

Period of data collection - In many districts it took a few months for the new systems to be fully operational. [...]changes in the numbers of patients going to institutions or in their lengths of stay in hospital might not be apparent from information collected in the first few months after the introduction of the act. Sep 1, 1994 EDITOR, - Peter A Lewis and colleagues studied the effect of the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 on the number of elderly people being discharged to private residential and nursing homes and on their length of stay in hospital before discharge. 1 In a recent study my department found that routinely collected NHS data on source of admission and discharge destination were unsatisfactory.