Primary Care Health Services Research

 

This theme covers a range of topics, such as the use of risk adjustment and case-mix measurement in primary care, health policy, and primary care informatics. Funding has come from a range of sources, including the Department of Health, National Institute for Health Research, the Commonwealth Fund of New York, and the US National Institutes of Health. Collaborators include the University of California San Francisco, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina. One example of our work is a report on primary care data published on behalf of the Association of Public Health Observatories. Another example is our analysis of the impact of health policy changes on health inequalities.

Drug Use and Safety

Medication errors are very common and an important cause of ill-health and death. We have examined the hospital admissions related to adverse drug reactions and are also developing prescribing safety indicators for use in primary care. Another area of work is safe prescribing in nursing homes, an important area of concern for the NHS.

Another important cause of death is drug poisoning, generally through intentional overdose. Each year in England and Wales, between 2,500 and 3,000 people die as a direct cause of drug poisoning. Reducing drug poisoning is part of several government initiatives. Analysis of routine data such as drug poisoning deaths, hospital admissions and prescription statistics play an important role in monitoring the effectiveness of these initiatives. Research undertaken by Oliver Morgan, a former PhD student in the Department, has covered paracetamol containing drugs, antidepressant drugs and drugs of misuse.