APHO National General Practice Profiles and Disease Prevalence Estimates Launched

The Association of Public Health Observatories have recently launched a revised National General Practice Profiles tool and updated Disease Prevalence Estimates.

National General Practice Profiles

The National General Practice Profiles tool is a freely accessible web-based tool designed to support GPs, clinical commissioning groups and PCTs to ensure that they are providing and commissioning effective and appropriate healthcare services for their local population. 

www.apho.org.uk/PRACPROF/

Using a variety of graphical displays such as spine charts and population pyramids, the tool presents a range of practice-level indicators, including demography, patient satisfaction survey results, QOF domains, prevalence estimates and secondary care use.

New features in the revised tool include:

• Summary profiles for clinical commissioning groups across England.
• Updated disease prevalence estimates at practice and PCT level for five long-term conditions (coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension and stroke).  
• Additional comparators: comparators can be used to compare practices with Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), PCTs and England.
• New-style population pyramids plus extra demographic data such as ethnicity.
• Faster navigation between different data sets and different comparisons.

Further improvements are expected in the coming weeks, including new NHS Comparators annual data once released, and extra indicators.

 Disease Prevalence Estimates

Updated modelled estimates of the prevalence of five diseases (coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension and stroke) with significant impact on the health and wellbeing of the population are now available to inform commissioning of services, and to support case finding and targeting of resources.

The models use information from the Health Survey for England and population statistics to provide the estimated prevalence of each long-term condition.

Results are provided for PCTs, lower and upper-tier local authorities, and GP practices at www.apho.org.uk/diseaseprevalencemodels

Practice and PCT level data are also included in the revised National General Practice Profiles tool at www.apho.org.uk/PRACPROF/

The tools are produced by the East of England Public Health Observatory, on behalf of the network of PHOs in England.  Other disease prevalence models, including for diabetes and chronic kidney disease, are also available. 

Further information on the need for, and methods of generating, disease prevalence models can be found in Technical Briefing No. 8: Prevalence Modelling, at www.apho.org.uk/prevalencemodelling.