Shipman repeat ‘could be avoided by monitoring’
Researchers have claimed that cases similar to that of the serial killer, Dr Harold Shipman, could be avoided by the simple monitoring of GP death rates.
Researchers from Imperial College London argued that potential problems could be spotted by the use of data on annual deaths at family physician and practice levels. The researchers also claimed that the monitoring of GPs could help to inform the quality of clinical care and maintain public trust.
The research was funded by the inquiry into how Dr Shipman was able to get away with killing his patients for so long without detection. Dr Shipman was jailed for murder in 2001 and was believed to have killed 215 patients, mostly elderly women.
The research, published in the Lancet, looked at the death rates of 1009 family physicians including Dr Shipman’s between 1993 and 1999. Thirty-three of the GPs crossed the threshold that the researchers had set as a potential hazard. They claimed that they had achieved a 97% success rate in identifying problems and there was a 5% false-alarm rate.
The researchers stated that poor data quality, plus factors such as the proportion of patients treated by these physicians in nursing homes or hospices were the likely explanations for most of these additional alarms.
They argued that a national system of monitoring could be put in place but there needs to be an improvement in the quality of data produced.
Paul Aylin from the Imperial College commented, “Cumulative sum charts represent a useful tool for monitoring deaths in primary care if used appropriately, and would have detected Shipman earlier than 1998. Improvement in data quality is, however, essential before any system based on these methods can be used.”
