Continuity of care - patients seeing the same GP over time - is declining in UK general practice. Research has shown that continuity of care is beneficial for patient experience, quality of care, health outcomes and efficient use of NHS resources.
Many general practices would like to try to improve the continuity of care they deliver, and this is now being encouraged by policy-makers.
However, it is currently difficult for practices to measure their continuity of care which is the first step towards improving it. Without this, it is impossible for practices to know whether any changes they make are effective.
The new Calculator, developed by Professor Chris Salisbury and colleagues at CAPC, is freely available to general practices in the UK.
The Calculator works out the level of continuity of care provided during face-to-face consultations, telephone consultations, video consultations or home visits with a GP over the previous two years.
It has been designed to work with the two main general practice IT systems in the UK – the current version is compatible with EMIS and there will be a second version which will be compatible with SystmOne, to be released in the coming weeks.
Professor Salisbury said: “This is a simple tool that takes less than 10 minutes to run and provides a range of useful measures of continuity which are suitable for different types of practices, including those that have personal lists and those which provide continuity within teams. The tool can be used on a regular basis to monitor improvements over time.”
The team would like to be able to provide practices with benchmarks so they can see how their continuity scores compare with other practices, and how scores vary across practices with different characteristics. Users are invited to share their results with the team for this purpose.
Professor Mark Rickenbach, GP and Royal College of General Practitioners’ Clinical Policy Representative for Continuity of Care, said: “There is a groundswell of opinion and evidence in support of continuity of care but continuity is actually declining.
“For years the missing key has been an easy way to measure continuity of care. Now, at last, we have one - a calculator that can link in with clinical records systems and use the common descriptors of continuity of care, which then feeds back to individual GPs and GP practices on how well they are doing.
“I am looking forward to hearing how useful other GPs find it, whether and how continuity of care increases, and how it positively impacts on – indeed saves – people’s lives.”
Dr Luke Sayers, GP Partner at Whitley Bay Health Centre and Project lead for Continuity of Care, North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board, said: “Measuring continuity of care has been tricky and a barrier to improvement work. This fantastic tool allows practices to measure continuity of care simply. It presents the different measurement data in an understandable format, so practices get a full picture of their baseline continuity. It's a real step forward in helping practices build relational continuity of care for their population.”
For more information and to download the tool, see Bristol Continuity of Care Calculator.
Watch a short demonstration video.
For queries, contact the research team: sscm-continuity@bristol.ac.uk.
Watch this short video introduction: