EDITOR, - We agree with the conclusions drawn by Alison S Conway and colleagues1 and would like to comment on several aspects of their results. A community based mental health service may be in a position to facilitate admissions, even though it has “avoiding admissions” as one of its goals, but we think that rather than quantifying admissions, finer measures of the effectiveness of such a service (as well as appropriateness of bed use) are whether admissions are planned or …