Measuring General Practice Productivity
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Measuring General Practice Productivity
IRAS ID
170562
Contact name
Jeremy Dawson
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 5 months, 30 days
Research summary
General practitioners (GPs) and other staff in their practices provide the first point of care for the majority of patients, and continuing community-based care for many. Despite this, existing mechanisms for measuring the performance (effectiveness and productivity) of general practices are under-developed. This study will aim to correct this by developing a measure of productivity that can be applied across most general practices. It will do this by including those who are best placed to decide what should be incorporated into the measure, e.g. GPs, other healthcare staff and the public.
Productivity at its most simple is the relationship between inputs (costs, staff and resources) and outputs. In a health context, this is not meaningful without considering quality of care as well as activity.
The first stage of the project will consult with a wide variety of people from these groups using a series of workshops based around a method called the Productivity Measurement and Enhancement System (ProMES). In these workshops a productivity measure will be constructed gradually by first identifying and agreeing the important dimensions of effectiveness, then exploring how these are best measured, and then by identifying the importance of each.
After the productivity measure is developed it will be tested over a minimum of 6 months in 50 general practices, to evaluate the acceptability of the measure, the time and resources taken to gather and enter the data, and any difficulties encountered.
REC name
West Midlands - South Birmingham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/WM/0347
Date of REC Opinion
15 Sep 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion