Inquiry into high mortality of GPs' patients finds no wrongdoing

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7510.180-a

BMJ 2005;331:180 (23 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7510.180-a

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Inquiry into high mortality of GPs' patients finds no wrongdoing

Roger Dobson

Abergavenny

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

An investigation into five GPs whose patients showed a highmortality has found no evidence of negligence or malpractice.

The review was carried out after the Shipman inquiry was notifiedof 12 GPs whose patients had an excessively high mortality.The inquiry recommended that the practices be investigated.An inquiry into two of them in the West Midlands, completedlast year, had also found no evidence of wrongdoing ( BMJ 2004;328:1474[Abstract/Free Full Text]).

The latest investigation found that the large number of nursinghome patients on the GPs' lists was likely to have been responsiblefor the high mortality.

An article published online ahead of print on 6 July in the Journal of Public Health (http://jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org,doi:10.1093/pubmed/fdi043)[Abstract/Free Full Text] warns that such inquiries are costlyand time consuming.

"The introduction of a national mortality monitoring systemfor GPs requires careful consideration of the consequences,not only for . . . [Full text of this article]

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An investigation into general practitioners associated with high patient mortality flagged up through the Shipman inquiry: retrospective analysis of routine data: Mohammed A Mohammed, Anthony Rathbone, Paulette Myers, Divya Patel, Helen Onions, and Andrew Stevens
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