Compulsory recording of patients' ethnic details will help to show disease trends

doi:10.1136/bmj.39567.616146.4E

BMJ 2008;336:1039 (10 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.39567.616146.4E

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Compulsory recording of patients’ ethnic details will help to show disease trends

Lisa Hitchen

¹ London

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

A research team is calling for GPs to record details of patients’language, religion, and country of birth routinely to help identifytrends in diseases in different ethnic populations.

A study by universities at Warwick, Leicester, and Birminghamhas found that only 10% of all patients had their ethnic grouprecorded in a general practice database. The importance of collectingsuch data has been recognised by the government, and GPs cannow earn one point under the quality and outcomes frameworkfor recording the ethnic group of new patients. But most GPsstill fail to do so, the researchers say.

The study, commissioned by Cancer Research UK and yet to bepublished, considered 15 058 patients enrolled at one generalpractice in Nuneaton. Since April 2006 the practice has beencollecting data on the ethnic group of newly enrolled patients.The 13 578 (90%) patients enrolled before then had not . . . [Full text of this article]

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