University of Birmingham

Academic Institute

CPRD246

Rates of blood test ordering in general practice are increasing. It is known that different general practices request very different numbers of blood tests for patients. Part of this difference is because they care for different types of patients. A practice may have more older patients who are more likely to need blood tests to investigate their symptoms, or they may have more patients with long-term conditions which require regular blood tests e.g. diabetes, thyroid diseases. However, even after taking these factors into consideration, big differences in the number of blood tests ordered by general practices remain. It is possible that clinicians in some general practices are more inclined to request all types of blood tests when compared to others. This study aims to investigate whether this might be the case.

There is considerable variation in blood test ordering behaviour between general practices. This variability has been found to be unrelated to the demographic, socioeconomic and case-mix factors of the practice. An alternative explanation is that variation may be explained by personal characteristics of clinicians or cultural characteristics of the general practices in which they work. This study is intended to understand variation in the ordering of diagnostic blood tests.

15/04/2021

Release