Technology

The developers of a new analytical platform have used a unique method to compare GP practice performance so that commissioners can identify and prioritise areas for improvement in each practice. One example highlights the lowest performing individual GP practices which could help reduce NHS drug spend by £700 million if they made simple adjustments and improved their prescribing performance to bring it into line with the most cost-effective prescribing practices which have the same characteristics.

Until now it has been difficult to find out which practices are prescribing effectively, or treating a disease well compared to any other practice. This is because practices vary in size, demographics of the registered population and types of treatment. There are also differences in the way they are managed.

One of Trayned Pioneer declinaisons, uses data science to compare the performance of every practice in England in thousands of different ways. It does this by identifying for each practice the 99 practices that are most like it in every way: size, age of patients, ethnic mix, deprivation and disease prevalence. When looking at a group of practices, say all those in a particular CCG, for any given indicator or benchmark, Trayned Pioneer sorts them into ten equal groups according to a value derived for each practice against its own nearest 99. These sub-groups are called deciles. The nearest 99 comparison changes with every performance indicator and it means that commissioners can find out how each practice should be performing on any indicator in comparison to the most similar practices around the country. This technique removes all the confounding factors that make it difficult to work out what is good and what is bad.

Dr Michael von Bertele, Chairman, Trayned Insight, said: “Our unique way of analysing GP practice performance means that for the first time we can state with confidence that variations in performance are statistically significant. We can show, for example, which individual practices can improve medicines prescribing and bring it up to the standard of the most effective prescribers within a group of 99 practices most similar to them. By weighting different factors in assessment of different performance indicator this approach exposes variations in a broad range of performance measures that have traditionally been masked using current methods. The new platform makes it possible to prioritise many other areas for improvement.”