Sixty-five hospitals were found to have higher-than-expected rates at 30 days after admission in 1987, 1988 and 1989.

The total annual cost of emergency admissions for older people in England is £11bn, the Audit Commission says, but £132m could be saved immediately if all areas with higher-than-expected rates made reductions.

Jeffrey Halpern, a telecommunications industry analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, wrote in a note to investors that Verizon's phone lines declined 4.9 percent, a higher-than-expected rate.

The union says workers at the plant have higher-than-expected rates of leukemia, cancer of the lung and bladder, vision difficulties and chronic fatigue syndrome, among other health problems.

Last week, Genentech stopped recruiting patients for a clinical trial of Avastin as a treatment for ovarian cancer after finding a higher-than-expected rate of gastrointestinal perforations.

(A pandemic is an international epidemic, with disease occurring at a higher-than-expected rate on several continents at once.)

The F.D.A. said last week that there was a higher-than-expected rate of polymyosits and dermatomyositis, two rare autoimmune diseases, among patients who had received collagen injections.

Boo.com's sales did not match expectations, due partly to a higher-than-expected rate of product returns (a service that was offered for free, but charged for by their logistics supplier Deutsche Post).

Lack of condom use was an important factor in the higher-than-expected rates of sexually transmitted diseases among the pledgers, the study found.

Responding to a higher-than-expected rate of retirement in recent months, the City Department of Correction said yesterday that it would hire 400 officers to patrol its jails.