BMJ 2001;323:1429 ( 15 December )

Letters

National service frameworks

    Framework's claim that GPs should devote more time to preventing coronary heart disease needs scrutiny
    National service framework for older people is worth a try

Framework's claim that GPs should devote more time to preventing coronary heart disease needs scrutiny

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR---The national service framework for coronary heart disease states that "additional coronary heart disease prevention activities . . . will consume time, effort and resource. Primary care teams will have to give careful consideration to how resources used on lower value and lower priority activities might be redirected to the high priority, high value treatments identified."1 The framework does not give any evidence justifying the claim that traditional services are low value or quantify the benefit of high value treatments.


Table Removed (Available Only in the Full Text)

I estimated the maximum benefit of activities aimed at reducing mortality by considering patients registered with a typical singlehanded general practitioner in northwest Lancashire because the area has the highest mortality from coronary heart disease in the United Kingdom. 2 3 Each year such a practice registers about 22 births and deaths.3 Since the framework's objective is to reduce mortality among those under 75 I estimated the maximum impact of the activities by assessing how . . . [Full text of this article]
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