There is a developing understanding of the difficulties faced by people with learning disabilities when they want to access health services. One of the projects that the NHS set in motion to address this was the NHS Better Metrics scheme which developed measures of performance to be used for local service quality improvement. The scheme [read the full story…]
Improving Health and Lives (IHaL) is the Learning Disabilities Public Health Observatory: a three year project funded by the Department of Health in response to Sir Jonathan Michael’s 2008 inquiry into access to healthcare for people with learning disabilities. The national observatory aims to provide better, easier to understand information on the health and wellbeing [read the full story…]
Research has consistently shown that access to healthcare services is poor for adults with learning disabilities and for those people who live in rural areas. The researchers in this study set out to find out whether adults with learning disabilities who lived in rural areas were at a double disadvantage. They looked at data from [read the full story…]
A new meta-analysis published in the British Journal of Psychiatry has found that people with mental health problems are significantly less likely to receive important cardiac treatment (revascularisation, angiography, angioplasty and bypass grafting) following a cardiac event. People with mental illness experience a 14% lower rate of invasive coronary interventions following a cardiac event and [read the full story…]
This cross-sectional study used interviews with over 1000 adults with learning disabilities within a defined location along with a review of their medical records. Area deprivation was defined by postcode, using Carstairs scores. The authors found that area deprivation had no influence on access to social supports, daytime primary health-care services or hospital admissions. However, [read the full story…]
