Implementing guidelines in primary care: can population impact measures help?

Background

Primary care organisations are faced with implementing a large number of guideline recommendations. We present methods by which the number of eligible patients requiring treatment, and the relative benefits to the whole population served by a general practice or Primary Care Trust, can be calculated to help prioritise between different guideline recommendations.

Methods

We have developed measures of population impact, "Number to be Treated in your Population (NTP)" and "Number of Events Prevented in your Population (NEPP)". Using literature-based estimates, we have applied these measures to guidelines for pharmacological methods of secondary prevention of myocardial infarction (MI) for a hypothetical general practice population of 10,000.

Results

Implementation of the NICE guidelines for the secondary prevention of MI will require 176 patients to be treated with aspirin, 147 patients with beta-blockers and with ACE-Inhibitors and 157 patients with statins (NTP). The benefit expressed as NEPP will range from 1.91 to 2.96 deaths prevented per year for aspirin and statins respectively. The drug cost per year varies from €1940 for aspirin to €60,525 for statins. Assuming incremental changes only (for those not already on treatment), aspirin post MI will be added for 37 patients and produce 0.40 of a death prevented per year at a drug cost of €410 and statins will be added for 120 patients and prevent 2.26 deaths per year at a drug cost of €46,150. An appropriate policy might be to reserve the use of statins until eligible patients have been established on aspirin, ACE-Inhibitors and beta blockers.

Conclusions

The use of population impact measures could help the Primary Care Organisation to prioritise resource allocation, although the results will vary according to local conditions which should be taken into account before the measures are used in practice.

     

Residency training in advance care planning: can it be done in the outpatient clinic?

Resident physicians are expected to assist their outpatients to understand and complete advance directives, but their efficacy in doing so remains uncertain. After receiving educational training, internal medicine residents identified at-risk patients and solicited them about advance directives. Residents completed pretest and posttest questionnaires that assessed their knowledge, skills, attitude, and comfort with advance directives. Patients were also surveyed about their attitudes regarding advance directives. Ten internal medicine residents and 88 patients participated. Residents' self-assessed knowledge rose from 6.0 to 9.2 on a 10-point Likert scale. Skills using advance directives increased from 4.0 to 7.9, attitudes improved from 6.0 to 8.4, and comfort rose from 5.4 to 8.9. Eighty-four percent of patients expressed interest in completing advance directives, and 16% actually completed documents. An educational intervention improved knowledge, skills, attitudes, and comfort with advance directives among internal medicine residents practicing in the outpatient setting. Meanwhile, patients demonstrated a strong interest in completing advance directives.     

Weight management in primary care: how can it be made more effective?

Obesity is often difficult to tackle in primary care. Pressure of time in the consultation, a lack of appropriately-trained primary care staff, a shortage of community dietitians or nutritionists, the potentially enormous caseload, language or cultural barriers and the sheer intractability of patients' eating habits, exercise behaviour and their clinical condition, all conspire to make general practitioners, other team members and often the patients themselves lose heart and stop even trying. However, there are ways of overcoming these difficulties. Examples of changes that evidence suggests are able to support and enhance basic one-to-one interventions in general practice include: improved clinical guidelines; better training of primary care staff; at-risk patient registers; smarter database search tools; new quality incentives; closer working with dietitians, counsellors and pharmacists; more hospital outreach clinics; designated general practitioner specialists and practice clustering; expanded exercise referral schemes and links with leisure providers; subsidised referral to commercial slimming groups; better use of patient groups and voluntary and community workers. The present paper describes a proposed 'triple-tier' pathway for weight management incorporating most of the elements mentioned earlier. With a more joined-up and creative approach to the development and organisation of primary care, more comprehensive training and workforce planning, and better integration with social care, voluntary groups and the commercial sector, weight management in general practice has the potential to be much more effective.     

Co-production in coping with care dependency in Germany: How can integrated local care centres contribute?

In Germany, most care dependent people are looked after by family members at home. Professional support can help ease the burden of caring relatives and stabilise home care. Ideally, care then is provided through the co-production of formal and informal caregivers. This article analyses how care dependent people and their family caregivers integrate professional support into their care arrangements. An analysis was conducted using data collected for a qualitative study evaluating integrated local care centres in North-Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The study is based on episodic interviews with users of these care centres and their family caregivers (N = 26). During the analysis, three interpretive and practice patterns relating to co-production of care were identified. These patterns reveal how the interviewees deal with (increasing) needs for assistance and care while incorporating professional care into their lives. The patterns help differentiate whether the interviewees (a) use developed care skills to contribute actively to the co-production with their layman knowledge, or (b) seek relief of their care responsibilities and withdraw temporarily from the direct sphere of care applying freed capacities to organise family daily life, or (c) use the services of the care centres to meet with other older people and to develop spaces for mutual help and co-production. The interpretive and practice patterns thus differ in the extent to which care users and family caregivers continue to play an ‘active role’ in the care process and contribute their own knowledge, ideas, expectations and particular care activities. In order to achieve a functioning co-production, professionals face the challenge of understanding these patterns that have been established over many years and of taking them into account appropriately.     

General practitioners,primary care and support for carers in England: can training make a difference?

As a part of the national carers' strategy, the Department of Health commissioned six pilot workshops spread across England for General Practitioners (GPs) and other primary healthcare workers. The six workshops were held during September and October 2009, arranged by the Royal College of General Practitioners and planned in consultation with the Princess Royal Trust for Carers. The workshops were delivered by one of two GPs and by a carer. The Department of Health commissioned an evaluation of the workshop programme. This paper reports on the attitudes towards and knowledge of carers by GPs and other primary care workers, such as community matrons, practice nurses, healthcare assistants, practice managers and receptionists. It also tracks changes over time from the questionnaire responses pre- and post-workshop and 3 months later in the GPs' and other primary care workers' response to carers. Prior to the workshops, GPs and other primary care workers saw primary care as having a significant role in directly assisting carers, especially with emotional support and in signposting to other services. However, there was a lack of knowledge about issues facing carers, limited confidence in assisting carers and few services within the primary care teams directly focussed on carers. The workshops were regarded positively by those who attended, and the evaluation found that there was a positive impact with GPs and other primary care workers reporting specific actions they had taken post-workshop to assist carers, greater confidence and awareness in working with carers, and increased knowledge about carers. The paper concludes by recommending how the pilot programme might be rolled out more widely.     

Prophylactic treatment after myocardial infarction in primary care: how far can we go?

BACKGROUND: Despite best practice, it may not be achievable in some patients to reach the optimal goals of secondary prevention recommendations for various reasons, such as co-morbidity, contraindications for some drugs or side effects. OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to estimate the achievable standards for audit purposes in primary care for prophylactic treatment of secondary prevention of myocardial infarction. METHODS: We conducted a survey of consecutive patients with a hospital diagnosis of first acute myocardial infarction during 1997 who were identified from discharge books from four hospitals and interviewed at their primary health centre 2 years after admission. The achievable standard for a prophylactic drug was then defined as the proportion of patients that could benefit from the treatment excluding those that for one justified reason or another were off medication. RESULTS: Three hundred and sixty-nine patients were interviewed in the follow-up. Aspirin or another antiplatelet regimen was prescribed in 86.9 patients, beta-blockers in 50.2%, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors in 32.5% and lipid-lowering drugs in 52%. The estimated achievable standards for those prescribed drugs were 94.5, 71,8, 50.5 and 69.8%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: There is an underuse of prophylactic drug therapies after myocardial infarction. The standards established in this study for secondary preventive drug treatment might be achieved through a reasonable effort by GPs working in primary care committed to improving the quality of care.     

HIV in prison: what are the risks and what can be done?

Prisons are recognised worldwide as important sites for transmission of blood-borne viruses (BBVs). There are two reasons why transmission risks in prison are higher than in the community. First, in most western countries, many prison entrants have histories of injecting drug use, and thus already have high prevalences of BBVs. Second, the lack or under-supply of preventive measures (such as clean needle and syringes or condoms) in most prisons, combined with extreme social conditions, creates extra opportunities for BBV transmission. HIV prevalence in prisoners in more developed countries ranges from 0.2% in Australia to over 10% in some European nations. There are case reports of HIV being transmitted by sharing injecting equipment and sexual activity. Tattooing has been reported as a risk factor for the transmission of BBVs in prison. Access to condoms and needle and syringe programmes in prisons is extremely limited, despite success when they have been introduced. The vast majority of prison inmates are incarcerated for only a few months before returning to the community--thus they are, over the long term, more appropriately regarded as 'citizens' than 'prisoners'. Public health policy must involve all sections of the community, including prison inmates, if we are to reduce transmission of HIV and other BBVs.     

Implementing managerial innovations in primary care: can we rank change drivers in complex adaptive organizations?

BACKGROUND: There has been much innovation in primary care in the past few decades. Although external and systemic constraints for health care organizations are relevant for their managerial evolution, there is also evidence that organizations operating under the same external pressures reach different levels of maturity. PURPOSES: Which of the internal drivers available explain and foster change? Is it possible to rank change drivers by looking at their rate of efficacy in order to define a general change management path in the relationship between managers and physicians? The study is a hypothesis-generating work, designed to discuss a framework, consistent with the complex adaptive systems literature, for more effective internal change management approaches. METHODS: We employed a qualitative approach to conduct a multiple case study in order to directly observe the evidence and to ask "key change players" for their perceptions. We studied different organizations all subject to the same external constraints in order to focus on the effects of internal change drivers. FINDINGS: According to key players' opinions, the main drivers for managerial development are characteristics of the actors involved: their motivation, leadership, and commitment; the quality of relationships among the main actors; and how the resources dedicated to manage change are used. Given these criteria, any organizational strategy and goal seems to be achievable. This is consistent with the suggestions coming from the complex adaptive system literature. MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS: Managers have to consider the management of the relationship with professionals as the key success factor for implementing change. Managerial leadership has to be diffused in the organization both in the vertical and horizontal dimensions. Innovations need a medium or long-term perspective to become widely applied, and this requires a strong commitment which is related to managerial stability. Resources for innovation are to be considered a critical driver for fostering the relationship between managers and professionals.