Department of Primary Care & Social Medicine
The Department of Primary Care and Social Medicine at Imperial College, which incorporates the Dr Foster Unit, examines the quality of healthcare provided by NHS organisations and addresses the impact of changes to patient care and their effect on outcomes in hospital. Recent research includes examining the relationship between mortality and delay in operation after hip fracture and a method for identifying patients at high risk of emergency hospital admissions. Previous research by members of the unit include an investigation into patient mortality at general practice level for the Shipman Inquiry and the use of Hospital Episode Statistics data to examine paediatric cardiac surgery at Bristol. The methods used in this work have been further developed and applied to secondary care in the form of a suite of tools which are now used in over two thirds of acute trusts. The department also has experience in analysing primary care data, and in particular a pilot project to provide a data repository for primary care data from all practices within a London PCT, which in turn will be linked to secondary care data providing an invaluable resource of indicators for safety and quality.