An abelian p-group C is said to be essentially finitely indecomposable (efi) if given any decomposition of G as the direct sum of a family of subgroups, there exists a positive integer n such that all but at moat a finite number of subgroups of this family are bounded by n. We look at examples and related questions. We prove that a reduced abelian p-group G is efi if and only if G modulo its elements of infinite height is efi. In the proof of this we obtain the following result which is of independent interest: Let A be a reduced p-group with a summand K such that K is a direct sum of cyclic groups. Let B be a basic subgroup of A. Then B contains a subgroup C such that C is a summand of A and the final rank of C is equal to the final rank of K.