Traffic lights: extracting order from the chaos of long-term care

Interpreting data on the balance and capacity of long-term care facilities within districts and their relationship to population ‘need’ has been difficult because of unmonitored cross-boundary flow, particularly within the independent sector. A simple banding technique is described which distinguishes likely importer and exporter districts. Modest provision of long-stay hospital care is shown to be associated with less use of rest/nursing home care.