Record Status This is a bibliographic record of a published health technology assessment from a member of INAHTA. No evaluation of the quality of this assessment has been made for the HTA database. Citation Guthrie B, Yu N, Murphy D, Donnan P, Dreischulte T. Measuring prevalence, reliability and variation in high-risk prescribing in general practice using multilevel modelling of observational data in a population database. Health Services and Delivery Research 2015; 3(42) Authors' objectives To create prescribing safety indicators usable in existing electronic clinical data and to examine (1) variation in high-risk prescribing between patients, GPs and practices including reliability of measurement and (2) changes over time in high-risk prescribing prevalence and variation between practices. Authors' conclusions High-risk prescribing is common and varies moderately between practices. High-risk prescribing at GP level cannot be easily measured routinely because of the difficulties in accurately identifying which GP actually prescribed the drug and because drug initiation is often a shared responsibility with specialists. For NSAID initiation, there was approximately three times greater variation between GPs than between practices. Most GPs with above average high-risk prescribing worked in practices which were not themselves above average. The observed reductions in high-risk prescribing between 2004 and 2009 were largely driven by falls in NSAID and antiplatelet prescribing, and there was no relationship between change in rate and change in variation between practices. These results are consistent with improvement interventions in all practices being more appropriate than interventions targeted on practices or GPs with higher than average high-risk prescribing. There is a need for research to understand why high-risk prescribing varies and to design and evaluate interventions to reduce it. Indexing Status Subject indexing assigned by CRD MeSH General Practice; Humans; Models, Theoretical; Prescriptions; Prevalence; Risk Language Published English Country of organisation England English summary An English language summary is available. Address for correspondence HS&DR Programme, National Institute for Health Research, Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre, University of Southampton, Alpha House, Enterprise Road, Southampton, SO16 7NS, UK Tel: +44 23 8059 4304
Email: hsdrinfo@southampton.ac.uk AccessionNumber 32015001107 Date abstract record published 03/11/2015 |