Changing practice as a quality indicator for primary care: analysis of data on voluntary disenrollment from the English GP Patient Survey

Nagraj, Shobhana, Abel, Gary, Paddison, Charlotte, Payne, Rupert, Elliott, Marc, Campbell, John and Roland, Martin (2013) Changing practice as a quality indicator for primary care: analysis of data on voluntary disenrollment from the English GP Patient Survey. BMC Family Practice, 14. ISSN 1471-2296

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Background: Changing family practice (voluntary disenrollment) without changing address may indicate dissatisfaction with care. We investigate the potential to use voluntary disenrollment as a quality indicator for primary care. Methods: Data from the English national GP Patient Survey (2,169,718 respondents), the number of voluntary disenrollments without change of address, data relating to practice characteristics (ethnicity, deprivation, gender of patients, practice size and practice density) and doctor characteristics were obtained for all family practices in England (n = 8450). Poisson regression analyses examined associations between rates of voluntary disenrollment, patient experience, and practice and doctor characteristics. Results: Mean and median rates of annual voluntary disenrollment were 11.2 and 7.3 per 1000 patients respectively. Strongest associations with high rates of disenrollment were low practice scores for doctor-patient communication and confidence and trust in the doctor (rate ratios 4.63 and 4.85). In a fully adjusted model, overall satisfaction encompassed other measures of patient experience (rate ratio 3.46). Patients were more likely to move from small practices (single-handed doctors had 2.75 times the disenrollment rate of practices with 6–9 doctors) and where there were other local practices. After allowing for these, substantial unexplained variation remained in practice rates of voluntary disenrollment. Conclusion: Family practices with low levels of patient satisfaction, especially for doctor patient communication, are more likely to experience high rates of disenrollment. However substantial variation in disenrollment rates remains among practices with similar levels of patient satisfaction, limiting the utility of voluntary disenrollment as a performance indicator for primary care in England.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2013 Nagraj et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Uncontrolled Keywords: primary care,voluntary disenrollment,quality of care
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 24 Jul 2015 22:30
Last Modified: 21 Oct 2022 00:54
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/53571
DOI: 10.1186/1471-2296-14-89

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item