Accessing Continuity study: Frequently Asked Questions

Registering to take part in the study

  • Although we only need one person from each practice to submit their continuity and access system data, there is no reason why other people can’t support the data collection process, and we would encourage this. We suggest that the person who registers for the study is just the person who will lead the data collection effort.

    ‍We will register the first person from the practice who completes the registration and consent process. If you would like to change who this person is, just email us at accessing-continuity@bristol.ac.uk

  • We ask that the person who provides practice consent is a member of the senior leadership team and/or holds a relevant managerial role. This will vary from practice to practice but may include practice managers, GP partners, and/or members of the research team at your practice.

  • This study is just designed for practices using EMIS or SystmOne as their electronic medical records system. This is because the Bristol Continuity of Care Calculator has been designed for these two systems. Unfortunately, we cannot accept continuity scores that are measured with other tools, as we cannot be sure that the results will be comparable.

Recognition for taking part in the study

  • This study is recognised on the NIHR RDN portfolio.

    Your participation in this study will be communicated to you local RRDN and will be taken into consideration as evidence of your research engagement when considering funding allocations for the coming year. PIC activity is going to be incentivised by the RDN and this study will be included.

Using the Bristol Continuity of Care Calculator

  • Before downloading the tools, please create a folder in an appropriate place on your computer called 'continuity'. Follow the link in your data collection email to access the tools that you will need to measure your practices' continuity of care. Click on the download button in the middle of the screen.

    The zip file will be saved in your downloads folder. Go to your download folder and right click on the zip file. Select 'Extract all'. Browse to the 'continuity' folder where you would like to store the tools and then click 'Extract'. You can then open all the files from within your 'continuity' folder. The Continuity of Care Calculator is a large excel file and may take a minute or two to open.

  • The Bristol Continuity of Care Calculator works by calculating your continuity of care over the last two years. It is possible that you may not have two years of appointment data, for example if you have recently merged with another practice or changed your electronic medical records system.

    If this is the case, we ask that you inform of us of this when you go to submit your continuity scores, using the free text box.

  • We are aware that there are different ways to calculate continuity of care. However, we cannot be sure that results from other tools are comparable to those that have been calculated using the Bristol Continuity of Care Calculator. For this study, we need to be sure that everyone is measuring continuity of care in the same way and therefore all continuity measurements in this study should be calculated using the Bristol Continuity of Care Calculator.

    If you have used the Bristol Continuity of Care Calculator before, we ask that you re-run the Calculator and enter your most up to date continuity scores.

  • We ask that everyone does the training exercise before entering their own practice data. This is for validity purposes, to ensure that everyone is using the Calculator correctly. If you have used the Calculator before, this shouldn’t take you very long, as we have provided the appointment data for the training exercise.

  • Large practices (more than 28,000 patients) may find their SystmOne search generates too many consultations to enter into the Continuity Calculator. To solve this problem, just run one or two of the searches (rather than all three) to extract a smaller proportion of patients. For example, using only patients with birthdates in April to create a 1 in 12 sample.

    Very large practices might find that SystmOne cannot produce two years of appointment data for patients born in a single month of the year. If this is the case, you might need to break down the searches even further, for example by running a search just for patients born in April, and doing two separate searches for consultations conducted 0-12 months previously and 13-24 months previously, and then entering the output into the April and August tabs of the Conversion Tool.

    If you are still not sure what to do, please email us at accessing-continuity@bristol.ac.uk.

  • Large practices may find their EMIS search generates too many consultations, even based on a 1 in 4 sample of patients. To solve this problem, you can change the EMIS search so that it extracts a smaller proportion of patients, for example using only patients with birthdates in April (a 1 in 12 sample). If you are not sure how to do this, just get in touch with us via accessing-continuity@bristol.ac.uk and we will provide you with more detailed instructions.

  • If you are having any trouble using the Bristol Continuity of Care Calculator, first check the User Guide, which talks you through the key steps. If you have not already done so, please watch the Training video for EMIS users or the Training video for SystmOne users.

    If you are still having difficulties, just email us at accessing-continuity@bristol.ac.uk.

Training video guide for EMIS users

Training video guide for SystmOne users

Use of data in the study