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Change in clinical practice is slow even when it is obvious change should occur. Changing to a generic drug took 8 months

Change in clinical practice is slow even when it is obvious change should occur. Changing to a generic drug took 8 months and it was 18 months for adopting a guideline on UTI.


"Substantial variation was observed in the speed with which individual NHS general practices responded to warranted changes in clinical practice. Changes in prescribing behaviour were detected automatically and robustly. Detection of structural breaks using indicator saturation methods opens up new opportunities to improve patient care through audit and feedback by moving away from cross sectional analyses, and automatically identifying institutions that respond rapidly, or slowly, to warranted changes in clinical practice."

This study reported in The BMJ used routine and comprehensive data collection which, the authors argue, is more robust than cross-sectional audit data. Routine monitoring of performance at an individual or practice level is important for identifying learning needs and required systems change.

Source: bmj.com

practice changes audit warranted automatically clinical identifying change