Using electronic medical records to evaluate healthcare interventions

Abstract

Successive Norwegian governments have introduced a number of health reforms that aim to make better use of resources while improving patient care. One of the most recent reforms, the Regular General Practitioner (GP) Scheme, will introduce a general practitioner patient list system across Norway. The government plans an evaluation of this reform. One project within the evaluation will develop a system for the collection of ‘activity data’ within primary healthcare. The intention is that these data will give an overview of what is happening within the primary healthcare sector and facilitate planning of services. Routine data stored in GPs’ electronic medical record systems (EMRSs) will be the major source of this activity data. Indeed, collection of these activity data may become a permanent feature of primary healthcare monitoring in Norway. This paper presents one method for obtaining these data and gives examples of the sort of data that are available in the EMRS. Finally, the paper discusses some of the problems that may be encountered when using EMRS data for evaluations of healthcare interventions. The greatest challenges in this field are unlikely to be technical or organisational, but human. In other words, what is the best way to encourage GPs to collect high quality data. © 2001, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.