TY - JOUR T1 - Looking to the future JF - Future Hospital Journal JO - Future Hosp J SP - 5 LP - 6 DO - 10.7861/futurehosp.14.002 VL - 1 IS - 1 AU - Richard Thompson Y1 - 2014/06/01 UR - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/1/1/5.abstract N2 - In 2012, we were starting to face the crisis in acute medical care. An RCP report published that year, Hospitals on the edge? The time for action,1 painted a stark picture: there had been a 37% rise in patient admissions over 10 years, and these patients were older and with more complex comorbidities. Physicians and their teams struggled to cope with the rising tide. The result was not always centred around the care of the patient, or even safe. Continuity of care was fragmented, with patients being moved multiple times and handover procedures poor; mortality was on average 10% higher in patients admitted over the weekends. A workforce crisis loomed, with trainees becoming less willing to follow the increasingly pressured career path of the medical registrar in general internal medicine. The transfer of patients back into the community was often creaking. In response, I appointed the Future Hospital Commission (FHC) to review all aspects of the design and delivery of inpatient hospital care. The Commission was formally independent of the RCP, under the chairmanship of Sir Michael Rawlins and led by Professor Tim Evans, and … ER -