Abstraction on the Urgent Care Centre Trial begins

We have many more patients to analyse in this UCC trial so this will be the first of many sessions.

 

The primary task is to make sure that the right SortED record is matched to the correct Electronic Patient Record (EPR) from the UCC.
On SortED, we were given permission to collect the patient’s 5-digit EPR number, their age and gender. The date/time seen was automatically recorded. 962 Sort records were available for abstraction. 20 records had an invalid EPR (< or > 5 digits) leaving 942 candidates for abstraction.

 

Records were recovered based on the EPR and date seen, then further confirmation of identity was obtained by checking initials, age, gender and, if necessary, the presenting complaint (added by the UCC receptionist). No patient identifiable fields were collected, but circa 20 other pieces of information were extracted from the EPR and entered into the UCC trial analytical database.

 

We are working as a two-person team with Barbara Cleaver examining the patient’s EPR and me entering data on to the abstraction forms I created. After the first gruelling session, my own layout was annoying me (poor flow) so some tweaking of layout took place!

 

Key information gathered was where the GP streamer decided to send the patient and the start and end timings for the streaming consultation and the later consultation (with either a second GP or a nurse within the UCC).

 

Of particular interest to us was the percent of patients sent to the ED at streaming or sent to the ED during the second consultation.

 

Gillie Francis – Dec 2017