General Practitioners' Referrals and Investigations, 1991-1992

The rate at which General Practitioners (GPs) refer patients to specialists and order pathology tests and imaging varies considerably between individual GPs. This study examines patterns of and reasons for referral, pathology and imaging in a group of randomly selected general practitioners in the Hunter Valley. The doctors who agreed to participate in the study were asked to sign a consent form and fill in a demographic questionnaire, which included questions about sex, age, postgraduate qualifications, years in practice, size of practice and practice characteristics. Every doctor was provided with a recording booklet based on one used by the Birmingham Research Unit of the Royal College of General Practitioners. The booklet was designed to record information about the patients age, sex and ,if applicable, details of referral, reason for referral, type of investigation and reason for ordering the investigation. The booklet results in four seperate data files, one each for the details of GP , patient, referral(s) and investigation(s).