Obtaining useful data from primary care

BMJ 1994;309:1304-1305 (12 November)

Letters

Obtaining useful data from primary care

EDITOR, - F M Haste points out the need for good quality dataon preventive issues in primary care and the shortcomings ofthe current banding system for health promotion.¹ M C Recordand colleagues found that general practitioners had similarconcerns and would prefer more relevant standardised data.²

We have adopted a standard procedure for documenting preventiveactivities recorded by general practitioners in inner Londonto provide comparable data among practices and over time. Sixtygeneral practitioners participated in a study. We found thatonly half of preventive activities recorded by general practitionerswere recorded on the practice computer and that a system thatrelied entirely on this source would not necessarily reflectwhat was being done. Secondly, there were major differencesin the denominator: when a simple procedure was used between15% and 37% of the registered population aged 30-64 were excludedfrom the final denominator because they . . . [Full text of this article]