Now available on PubMed Central
Measuring the true value of primary care
Dr Tim olde Hartman and primary care colleagues from around the globe discuss the value of primary care alongside the challenges of monitoring and measuring comprehensive primary care performance within health systems.
They highlight current limitations which seek to quantify primary care contribution based on disease specific indicators, rather than considering the full breadth of services. They argue that without the use of robust measures to comprehensively capture primary care performance, there is a bias towards individual disease-focused secondary care. They suggest that this does not reflect quality of care in an increasing complex and multimorbid population. Listen the authors discuss their article in this brief audio abstract.
Latest articlesBJGP Open is an international, peer reviewed, open access, online-only journal of primary care, which publishes original research and other articles of importance to primary care clinicians, researchers and teachers worldwide.
The full BJGP Open archive is available on this site, is preserved in Portico, and can be viewed at PubMed Central. The journal is fully indexed on PubMed, Scopus, and Embase, and is included in the Directory of Open Access Journals.
Read more About BJGP Open.
Highlights
Latest Articles
Recent Features
Special issue: Race and Racism in Primary Care
Special issue: COVID-19 and Primary Care
How is the COVID-19 pandemic influencing the ability of international health systems to deliver high quality primary care? Read Guest Editor Dr Luke Allen’s introduction to this special issue, which includes managing the pandemic in rural Africa, the response from six well-resourced countries, and the relationship between perceived ‘strong’ primary care and COVID-19 mortality.
Naturietic peptide blood tests and heart failure
In this observational study from the Netherlands, Valk and colleagues examined the frequency of natriuretic peptide requests by GPs in excluding or confirming a diagnosis of heart failure. Their results suggest under-utilisation of this blood test. The authors encourage GPs to increase test requests in excluding heart failure and for opportunistic screening.
Spirometry to detect early lung disease in adults
There is limited evidence on the value of using spirometry in early adults to predict the later development of lung disease. In this Danish population-based study, spirometry in two cohorts, aged 30-49 years, and 45-64 years was shown to have a high predictive value in identifying cases of subsequent lung disease. The authors suggest that this evidence should encourage GPs to use spirometry more frequently in younger adults as a predictive tool.
Did social distancing reduce the spread of COVID-19?
In this study, 5-weekly COVID-19 incidence rates per 100 000 people for 149 English Upper Tier Local Authorities were examined between 16 March and 19 April 2020. The results suggest that COVID-19 rates strongly decreased in the most densely populated areas of the UK. These findings have substantial implications for the easing of social distancing measures, particularly within highly populated areas.
Altmetric Data
Altmetric tracks attention and engagement of scholarly articles.The following list shows the articles most frequently shared in social media over the past six months.
- Finding the 'right' GP: a qualitative study of the experiences of people with long-COVIDLast mentioned on Sat Feb 20 2021
- Grief symptoms and primary care use: a prospective study of family caregiversLast mentioned on Wed Sep 02 2020
- More »