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- Page navigation anchor for RE: eLetter from Mitchell and Hardy 10th October 2014RE: eLetter from Mitchell and Hardy 10th October 2014
We are grateful to Mitchell and Hardy for highlighting their recent publication in Psychiatric Services .1 We agree that we should have cited this paper, but we were unaware of it (possibly because it was published around the same time that we were preparing our manuscript for submission). For this omission we unreservedly apologise.
However, we do not entirely agree that our UK-wide comparisons of QoF data were “almost identical” to their work. Although there are obviously some similarities in these papers because both made use of the same publicly-available QoF databases, our paper is different in a number of important regards. These differences are perhaps more evident on reading the full-length online version of our paper, which runs to eight pages, five tables of data and 53 references.
Firstly, our analyses were cross-jurisdictional, with data from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England (Mitchell and Hardy considered only England). While the bulk of the UK population resides in England, clearly QoF analyses for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also important, especially in these times of uncertainty around the possibility of more devolved power over healthcare provision. This is why we submitted our work to the British Journal of General Practice rather than a specialist journal such as Psychiatric Services (which is published by the American Psychiatric Association).
Secondly, we specifically calculate...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared. - Page navigation anchor for RE: Physical health indicators in major mental illness: analysis of QOF data across UK general practiceRE: Physical health indicators in major mental illness: analysis of QOF data across UK general practice
We read with interest the article by Martin et al.1 We very much welcome the increased attention on physical health indicators in those with mental ill health. Indeed, this is a topic increasingly emphasised at a national level, for example NHS England have introduced a payment mechanism to encourage more physical health monitoring in this group (http://www.england.nhs.uk/2014/05/15/physical-mot/). The authors claim “this is the first study to directly compare payment, exception, and population achievement rates for individual mental health indicators with other individual chronic disease indicators across the whole of the UK and between nations”. Yet we conducted an almost identical analysis using the same database in 2013.2 This has not been cited by the authors. To the authors credit they have added to our publication a comparison in Scotland, Ireland and Wales (where the same findings applied) and also added a comparison against chronic kidney disease. It may be simple to overlook an almost identical paper but we note the authors have not cited any of our related work of note. For example our group has extensively mapped the extent of metabolic problems in SMI3 we have conducted the only meta-analysis of physical health monitoring in patients with mental illness.4 We have examined education interventions that may improve deficits5-7 and looked at attendance rates in people with SMI called for t...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared.