An NHS telephone service run with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer failed to keep patients out of hospital or cut costs and may have actually increased them, research suggests.

Birmingham OwnHealth was launched in 2006 and included people with poorly controlled diabetes and cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure and coronary heart disease.

Patients in Birmingham received telephone counselling once a month for around 15 minutes plus a personalised care plan, with the aim of providing more community-based care.

But a team commissioned by the Government has found patients were more likely to end up in hospital than those not on the programme, while costs increased.

Experts writing online in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) examined data for 2,698 patients on the programme and compared them with a group matched for medical history receiving no telephone support. They looked at how many patients receiving telephone support ended up in hospital per year, alongside other data on outpatient attendances and costs to hospitals.

Those on the programme had more admissions (an extra 0.05 per head, relative to a 13.6 per cent increase) compared with people in the other group and had more hospital attendances (0.37 per head more).

They also cost an extra £175 per head compared with the other group.

The experts, from Ernst and Young and the Nuffield Trust, were commissioned by the Department of Health to evaluate the impact of the telephone health coaching service – England’s largest.

They concluded: “The Birmingham OwnHealth telephone health coaching intervention did not lead to the expected reductions in hospital admissions or secondary care costs over 12 months, and could have led to increases.”

The Birmingham OwnHealth programme was a partnership between NHS Birmingham East and North, Pfizer Health Solutions and NHS Direct.

Adam Steventon, senior research analyst at the Nuffield Trust, who led the analysis, said: “Policymakers are hoping that, by improving community-based care, unnecessary hospital admissions can be avoided. Birmingham OwnHealth appears not to have achieved this aim, at least in the period that we studied.”

A spokeswoman for Pfizer said the programme was not set up specifically to reduce the cost of hospital admissions. All of the OwnHealth programmes, including Birmingham, closed in 2012, she added.

“Data from annual patient surveys conducted by the service showed high patient satisfaction and increased confidence in managing conditions.

“In addition, across a four year period (2006-2010), 41 per cent felt they had reduced their need to go to hospital.”