Exploration of population and practice characteristics explaining differences between practices in the proportion of hospital admissions that are emergencies

Table 4 Predictors of the proportion of admissions that were emergency (linear regression, n = 221)

Variable	Beta	SE Beta	Sig	Adjusted R Sq
Constant	0.026	0.075
Deprivation index	0.004	0.000	<0.001	0.473
Proportion of patients who were male	0.720	0.116	<0.001	0.572
Outpatient appointments per 10,000 patients	0.002	0.000	<0.001	0.590
Proportion of white patients	−0.001	0.000	<0.001	0.616
Recorded hypertension prevalence	−0.461	0.129	<0.001	0.629
Practice list size/100	−0.002	0.001	0.001	0.644
Proportion aged 65 or over	0.063	0.458	0.648
Proportion of total clinical QOF points obtained	−0.053	−1.148	0.253
Proportion of patients able to consult their preferred GP	−0.039	−0.845	0.399

Beta indicates the amount of change for one unit change of the independent variable, controlling for the other independent variables. Thus, an increase of 1% in the proportion of the practice population who are male is associated with a 0.7% increase in the proportion of admissions that are emergency, whilst a 1% increase in recorded prevalence of hypertension is associated with a 0.46% decrease in the proportion of admissions that are emergency.

ISSN: 1471-2296