Understanding Mortality Patterns in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland

Principal Investigator: Dr Steven Levene

Other key staff: Professor Richard Baker, Professor Kamlesh Khunti and Dr John Bankart

Partners involved: University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, NHS Leicester City, NHS Leicestershire County and Rutland, NHS Northamptonshire and the University of Leicester

Summary: Tackling excess cardiovascular disease is a major local health problem. This project is investigating the relationship between hard cardiovascular outcomes (mortality and hospital admissions) and factors in the population (such as age, sex, deprivation) and GP performance.

This project has two phases; the first being analysis at Primary Care Trust (PCT) level, involving all PCTs in England. Phase one will involve analysis of already collected data and attempt to develop a prognostic model to explain differences in adverse cardiovascular outcomes between English PCTs using factors relating to the population and GP practice performance. The second Phase will be analysis of available data at practice level, involving practices in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland, to predict mortality and admission rates and to find out what variables in cardiovascular outcome, demography and GP practice organisation are associated with differences in practice performance.

Aims:

• Explore ways of investigating the public health impact of major developments such as the CLAHRC
• Understand the association between practice characteristics and the key outcomes of mortality and admission rates
• Explore the development of methods to enable PCTs to monitor practice performance

Further information: If you would like to be involved in this study, or for more information, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Start date: 09/2009                                                                           Expected end date: 06/2010

Project outcomes:

• Reports will be prepared for practice and local health communities to inform discussion about service improvements in identifying patient needs, organising services, prioritising activities and requesting additional resources. This could potentially lead to improvements in primary care performance in tackling excess cardiovascular disease, a major local public health problem.