Dataset Information

Out-of-hours palliative care provided by GP co-operatives: availability, content and effect of transferred information.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Out-of-hours GP care in England, Denmark and the Netherlands has been reorganised and is now provided by large scale GP co-operatives. Adequate transfer of information is necessary in order to assure continuity of care, which is of major importance in palliative care. We conducted a study to assess the availability, content and effect of information transferred to the GP co-operatives.

Methods

Cross-sectional exploratory study of all palliative care phone calls during a period of one year to a GP co-operative.

Results

The total number of phone calls about patients who needed palliative care was 0.75% of all calls to the GP co-operative. Information was transferred by GPs on 25.5% of palliative care patient calls, and on 12% of palliative care patient calls from residential care homes. For terminally ill patients the number of information transfers increased to 28.9%. When information was transferred, the content consisted mainly of clinical data. Information about the diagnosis and current problems was transferred in more than 90% of cases, information about the patient's wishes in 45% and information about the patient's psychosocial situation in 30.5% of cases.A home visit was made after 53% of the palliative care calls.When information was transferred, fewer patients were referred to a hospital.

Conclusion

GPs frequently fail to transfer information about their palliative care patients to the GP co-operatives. Locums working at the GP co-operative are thus required to provide palliative care in complex situations without receiving adequate informationGPs should be encouraged and trained to make this information available to the GP co-operatives.

SUBMITTER: Schweitzer BP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2789043 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Out-of-hours palliative care provided by GP co-operatives: availability, content and effect of transferred information.

Schweitzer Bart P M BP Blankenstein Nettie N Deliens Luc L van der Horst Henriette H

BMC palliative care 20091128

<h4>Background</h4>Out-of-hours GP care in England, Denmark and the Netherlands has been reorganised and is now provided by large scale GP co-operatives. Adequate transfer of information is necessary in order to assure continuity of care, which is of major importance in palliative care. We conducted a study to assess the availability, content and effect of information transferred to the GP co-operatives.<h4>Methods</h4>Cross-sectional exploratory study of all palliative care phone calls during a ...[more]

PMID: 19943956

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Project description:BACKGROUND:A 2014 national audit used the English General Practice Patient Survey (GPPS) to compare service users' experience of out-of-hours general practitioner (GP) services, yet there is no published evidence on the validity of these GPPS items. OBJECTIVES:Establish the construct and concurrent validity of GPPS items evaluating service users' experience of GP out-of-hours care. METHODS:Cross-sectional postal survey of service users (n=1396) of six English out-of-hours providers. Participants reported on four GPPS items evaluating out-of-hours care (three items modified following cognitive interviews with service users), and 14 evaluative items from the Out-of-hours Patient Questionnaire (OPQ). Construct validity was assessed through correlations between any reliable (Cochran's ?>0.7) scales, as suggested by a principal component analysis of the modified GPPS items, with the 'entry access' (four items) and 'consultation satisfaction' (10 items) OPQ subscales. Concurrent validity was determined by investigating whether each modified GPPS item was associated with thematically related items from the OPQ using linear regressions. RESULTS:The modified GPPS item-set formed a single scale (?=0.77), which summarised the two-component structure of the OPQ moderately well; explaining 39.7% of variation in the 'entry access' scores (r=0.63) and 44.0% of variation in the 'consultation satisfaction' scores (r=0.66), demonstrating acceptable construct validity. Concurrent validity was verified as each modified GPPS item was highly associated with a distinct set of related items from the OPQ. CONCLUSIONS:Minor modifications are required for the English GPPS items evaluating out-of-hours care to improve comprehension by service users. A modified question set was demonstrated to comprise a valid measure of service users' overall satisfaction with out-of-hours care received. This demonstrates the potential for the use of as few as four items in benchmarking providers and assisting services in identifying, implementing and assessing quality improvement initiatives.

Project description:BackgroundGeneral practitioners (GPs) often assess patients with acute infections. It is challenging for GPs to recognize patients needing immediate hospital referral for sepsis while avoiding unnecessary referrals. This study aimed to predict adverse sepsis-related outcomes from telephone triage information of patients presenting to out-of-hours GP cooperatives.MethodsA retrospective cohort study using linked routine care databases from out-of-hours GP cooperatives, general practices, hospitals and mortality registration. We included adult patients with complaints possibly related to an acute infection, who were assessed (clinic consultation or home visit) by a GP from a GP cooperative between 2017-2019. We used telephone triage information to derive a risk prediction model for sepsis-related adverse outcome (infection-related ICU admission within seven days or infection-related death within 30 days) using logistic regression, random forest, and neural network machine learning techniques. Data from 2017 and 2018 were used for derivation and from 2019 for validation.ResultsWe included 155,486 patients (median age of 51 years; 59% females) in the analyses. The strongest predictors for sepsis-related adverse outcome were age, type of contact (home visit or clinic consultation), patients considered ABCD unstable during triage, and the entry complaints"general malaise", "shortness of breath" and "fever". The multivariable logistic regression model resulted in a C-statistic of 0.89 (95% CI 0.88-0.90) with good calibration. Machine learning models performed similarly to the logistic regression model. A "sepsis alert" based on a predicted probability >1% resulted in a sensitivity of 82% and a positive predictive value of 4.5%. However, most events occurred in patients receiving home visits, and model performance was substantially worse in this subgroup (C-statistic 0.70).ConclusionSeveral patient characteristics identified during telephone triage of patients presenting to out-of-hours GP cooperatives were associated with sepsis-related adverse outcomes. Still, on a patient level, predictions were not sufficiently accurate for clinical purposes.

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Dataset Information

Out-of-hours palliative care provided by GP co-operatives: availability, content and effect of transferred information.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Publications

Out-of-hours palliative care provided by GP co-operatives: availability, content and effect of transferred information.

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