Burden of primary and secondary care for high-risk patients before and after major surgery
It remains unclear how an episode of surgery alters the health trajectory for high-risk patients, especially the severity of underlying co-morbid diseases. While mortality and hospital admissions are important, most patients are treated in the community by their General Practitioner (GP).
We will examine a high-acuity dataset including patients with primary care providers within Tower Hamlets Clinical Commissioning Group (an inner-city area of high social and healthcare needs comprising 250,000 patients from 36 GP practices) who experienced major surgery within Barts Health NHS Trust. Data quality is extremely high because they are derived from patient records used by GPs in their routine clinical work. Using this dataset, we will examine primary care interactions, including prescribing data, co-morbidities (including severity and treatment) and secondary care attendances during the two years before, and after surgery.