Abstract
Background: The complexity of general practice consultations may be increasing and vary in different settings. Testing these hypotheses requires a measure of complexity.
Aim: To develop a valid measure of general practice consultation complexity applicable to routine medical records.
Design: Delphi study to select potential indicators of complexity followed by cross-sectional study to develop and validate a complexity measure.
Setting: English general practices.
Method: An online Delphi study over two rounds involved 32 general practitioners to identify potential indicators of consultation complexity. The cross-sectional study used an age-sex stratified random sample of 173,130 patients and 725,616 general practice face-to-face consultations from 2013/14 in the Clinical Practice Research Datalink. We explored independent relationships between each indicator and consultation duration using mixed effects regression models, and revalidated findings using data from 2017/18. We assessed the proportion of complex consultations in different age-sex groups.
Results: After two rounds, the Delphi panel endorsed 34 of 45 possible complexity indicators. In the cross-sectional study, after excluding factors because of low prevalence or confounding, 17 indicators were retained. Defining complexity as the presence of any of these factors, 308,370 consultations (42.5%) were complex. Mean duration of complex consultations was 10.49 minutes, compared to 9.64 minutes for non-complex consultations. The proportion of complex consultations was similar in men and women but increased with age.
Conclusion: Our consultation complexity measure has face and construct validity. It may be useful for research, management and policy, informing decisions about the range of resources needed in different practices.
Aim: To develop a valid measure of general practice consultation complexity applicable to routine medical records.
Design: Delphi study to select potential indicators of complexity followed by cross-sectional study to develop and validate a complexity measure.
Setting: English general practices.
Method: An online Delphi study over two rounds involved 32 general practitioners to identify potential indicators of consultation complexity. The cross-sectional study used an age-sex stratified random sample of 173,130 patients and 725,616 general practice face-to-face consultations from 2013/14 in the Clinical Practice Research Datalink. We explored independent relationships between each indicator and consultation duration using mixed effects regression models, and revalidated findings using data from 2017/18. We assessed the proportion of complex consultations in different age-sex groups.
Results: After two rounds, the Delphi panel endorsed 34 of 45 possible complexity indicators. In the cross-sectional study, after excluding factors because of low prevalence or confounding, 17 indicators were retained. Defining complexity as the presence of any of these factors, 308,370 consultations (42.5%) were complex. Mean duration of complex consultations was 10.49 minutes, compared to 9.64 minutes for non-complex consultations. The proportion of complex consultations was similar in men and women but increased with age.
Conclusion: Our consultation complexity measure has face and construct validity. It may be useful for research, management and policy, informing decisions about the range of resources needed in different practices.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | British Journal of General Practice |
| Early online date | 22 Dec 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 27 May 2021 |
Keywords
- Clinical (general)
- Diagnosis
- International
- Clinical (physical)
- Cancer
- Education and standards
- Patient safety
- Research methods
- Epidemiology
Access to Document
- Full-text PDF (final published version)
This is the final published version of the article (version of record). It first appeared online via Royal College of General Practitioners at https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2020.0486 . Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher.
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