AbstractsMedical & Health Science

ABSTRACTThe University of ManchesterSzeSeng ChanMaster of Philosophy in Oral and Maxillofacial SurgeryThe Use of Electronic Medical Records to Facilitate Identification of Patients Presenting With Oro-facial Complaints To The General Medical PractitionersJanuary 2014Aims : To study the pattern of attendance of patients who present to General Medical Practitioners (GMPs) with oro-facial or/and dental complaints. Data Source : All the Primary Medical Cares (PMCs) in the North West e-health database (NWeH). Population :All the patients of 54 PMCs in Salford who had registered themselves with GMPs from January 2009 to 15th December 2012.Method :A secondary analysis is performed on electronic consultation data entered daily at PMCs. The medical events were recorded by using Read Codes Clinical Classification system (RCCC). An agreed list of codes was designed by the investigators to recognise patients presenting with oro-facial complaints. The data extracted was anonymised. A descriptive analysis is used to define the patients’ characteristics.Result :There were 20,216 patients who visited their GMPs for at least one or more oro-facial or/and dental complaints by 2012. Of all the 908,062 medical attendance at PMCs, 10.4% were related to oro-facial or/and dental problems. This represents 9.39% of the patients (n =215,382) from population of Salford who have registered themselves with GMPs. Oral aphthous ulcer was the commonest oro-facial disease presented to GMPs. Discussion :Major challenges faced included data ownership and security issues, incomplete data and inconsistent data; and variation of data quality due to differences of coding behaviour of GMPs. The attendances for oro-facial or/and dental complaints were 1.94 time higher during weekdays than at weekend. A small but gradual rise was noted in the number of attendance related to dental abscess. This development may be the result of spending cut in NHS dental service.Conclusion :The attendance rate for oro-facial and/or dental complaints varied between PMCs in Salford, but was significant and may have far-reaching implications on dental care planning in the United Kingdom (UK).