General practitioners providing non-urgent care in emergency department: a natural experiment

BMJ Open
Olalekan A UthmanAileen Clarke

Abstract

To examine whether care provided by general practitioners (GPs) to non-urgent patients in the emergency department differs significantly from care provided by usual accident and emergency (A&E) staff in terms of process outcomes and A&E clinical quality indicators. Propensity score matched cohort study. GPs in A&E colocated within the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust between May 2015 and March 2016. Non-urgent attendances visits to the A&E department. Process outcomes (any investigation, any blood investigation, any radiological investigation, any intervention, admission and referrals) and A&E clinical indicators (spent 4 hours plus, left without being seen and 7-day reattendance). A total of 5426 patients seen by GPs in A&E were matched with 10 852 patients seen by emergency physicians (ratio 1:2). Compared with standard care in A&E, GPs in A&E significantly: admitted fewer patients (risk ratio (RR) 0.28, 95% CI 0.25 to 0.31), referred fewer patients to other specialists (RR 0.31, 95% CI 0.24 to 0.40), ordered fewer radiological investigations (RR 0.38, 95% CI 0.34 to 0.42), ordered fewer blood tests (0.57, 95% CI 0.52 to 0.61) and ordered fewer investigations (0.93, 95% CI 0.90 to 0.96). However, they ...Continue Reading

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