Targeted Interventions to Improve the Systematic Collection of Acute Respiratory Infection Clinical Data from Primary Care Computerised Medical Records

Data quality in primary care is important for surveillance and research projects based on routinely collected computerised medical records data. We present the results of a targeted intervention of incentives and tools to record specific data about acute respiratory infectious disease. As part of an epidemiological study, practices received a template to code this information, which could also act as a consultation template. Use of the template was not restricted to patients taking part in the epidemiological study. We saw significant increases in coded data for patients in the study in the four areas that we examined; oxygen saturation, body temperature, respiratory rate and history of fever. For patients not included in the study we saw only small differences between study practices and non-study practices. There was an increased frequency of recording of measured body temperature in study practices but the effect was small (1.1%) 95% CI [0.56%,1.66%]. Primary care data quality can be improved with targeted interventions and support, but the effect does not transfer out of the specific patients for which it has been incentivised.